The Proustian equation is delicately balanced.
That’s the first sentence of Samuel Beckett’s study of Proust, a book I acquired young when Beckett was still alive – I pictured this emaciated man living in a dustbin in Paris – and Proust loomed like some mountain to be tackled only after years on the lower slopes.
In Deirdre Bair’s much-derided life of Beckett there’s a vignette of him lecturing at Trinity: thirty minutes of silent staring out of the window, then one, perhaps two lapidary sentences, then silence unbroken until the bell released the students. Joy. Unless you were there, of course. Perhaps that opening sentence came through the window.
I never did go on with the book, and I’ve lost my copy but the sentence wanders into consciousness now and then like an old friend. I like to think Beckett would approve of this situation.