On Reading a Long Novel for a Long, Long Time by Orlando Bartro
Sometimes, you don’t want a novel to end.
I know a person who’s been reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time for nineteen years. The person happens to be Orlando Bartro.
Yes, I’ve been reading this seven-volume masterpiece for nineteen years, allowing it to merge with my daily thoughts to such an extent that Proust’s insights into the self and his sensitivity for complexity have become like a daily commentator who walks alongside me, often whispering into my ear to offer other perspectives.
I’ve also been reading Musil’s The Man Without Qualities for fifteen years. It’s a two-volume masterpiece of 1,700 pages. I’ve been reading this mostly in parks and airports.
And I’ve been reading Richardson’s Clarissa for ten years. Its 1,500 pages of dense typescript sit on the backseat of my car, and I read it whenever I’m waiting for someone, such as while in line at a bank or barbershop.
I began reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time at my grandmother’s house. I was in bed in the guest room, and I remember looking up from the book at my reflection in the opposite mirror while I was thinking about Proust’s description of a magic lantern. I knew at that moment that I didn’t want the book to end and decided to read it slowly enough that it wouldn’t. I even resolved to read it so slowly that I wouldn’t be able to remember it very well, and would have to begin again at the beginning if I ever reached the last page, years in the future.
After seven years of reading In Search of Lost Time, I reached the midpoint—and was upset. “It’s half over!” I lamented. So, I reread the first volume (Swann’s Way) in French.
I don’t want to reach the end of any of these three long masterpieces. They’ve become the background to my other reading, the touchstones for excellence, the high examples.
Postscript
This year I finished In Search of Lost Time and The Man Without Qualities, and started reading both of them again; but luckily, I’m only just beyond the midpoint of Clarissa.
* Orlando Bartro is the author of Toward Two Words, a comical & surreal novel about a man who finds yet another woman he never knew, usually available at Amazon for $4.91.