Weekend Guide: The Book Club

In Search of Lost Time 🕰

For seventeen years a group of people have been meeting in a Buenos Aires cafe to discuss the same book. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust.

This is such a romantic notion that any more detail is almost irrelevant.

One can choose to look at the sadder side of this situation as a palliative practice — a routine that keeps these old folks in a comfortably numb, neutral state. The more optimistic side of the coin reveals a group of people who are so curious, so intent, on getting to the root of the human condition through these characters that they’ve dedicated their lives to this twisted path to self actualization.

I can only hope to be a member of a club like this one day.

In the trailer of Le Temps Perdu (2020) one member of the book club lets rip a real doozy of a statement.

“Everything that happens in the novel, in some point in my life I have felt it. Exactly how Proust describes it.”

That, right there, is what keeps ‘em coming back. It’s why I read novels. It’s a way to develop the empathy muscle, and to validate that what you feel, and how you experience life isn’t new to you.

We are all the protagonist in our own story, but it’s important to remember that you may be the villain in someone else’s. We all share the human condition — good, bad, and ugly — what’s the harm in sitting in a cafe and talking about it?