Friday, October 17, 2008

Finding Proust in Unexpected Places

One would think that a baseball chatroom would have to do with baseball, true?

I found a nice writeup on Proust, indeed practically a summary in the Baltimore Orioles baseball chat. Who knew?

http://forum.orioleshangout.com/forums/showthread.php?t=71367

The odd thing is, after the Red Sox super-exciting game last night, I couldn't go to sleep, although I had actually slept through most of the Red Sox scoring. Woke up thinking I was in a dream, thank god a dream and not the 7-0 nightmare of earlier in the evening.

Anyway, I picked up Proust and read a couple pages, which were relaxing enough --his grandmother is sick--to send me back to dreamland. Have you ever noticed that some people are really good patients and will do exactly what the doctor recommends no matter what. Like, chop off your head and come back in three days, and that patient would do it, or try. Whereas other patients have a more laissez-faire idea and do what they feel like, or not. My father, alas, was one of those and I am his daughter, horrifying some of my good friends who follow the letter and the spirit and so on.

Proust's grandmother's illness seems complicated. In those days they didn't have all the good diagnostic tools we have today, and various doctors were called, second and third opinions, and specialists who had no knowledge in the area of the grandmother's illness. Interesting to see how times have and have not changed.

Odette, the other one

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