Quote of the Day (Erin Kendall Braun, on How Memory Operates)

“Most people think that their memory operates like a video recorder, replaying events as they originally happened. But memories aren’t static and objective like a recording. Instead, they’re associative: our brains link together the relevant details of experiences to store and later recall.”— American cognitive neuroscientist and memory expert Erin Kendall Braun, quoted by Julia Joy, “Ask an Alum: Why You Can’t Always Trust Your Memory,” Columbia, Winter 2025-26

Quote of the Day (Marcel Proust, on ‘Memory’s Pictures’)

“How paradoxical it is to seek in reality memory's pictures, which must always lack the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from their not being perceived by the senses. The reality that I had known no longer existed….The places that we have known do not belong only to the world of space in which we locate them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; the remembrance of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.”—French novelist Marcel Proust (1870-1922), Swann’s Way (Vol. 1 of In Search of Lost Time), translated by C.K. Moncrieff (1913)

Quote of the Day (Jane Austen, on Memory)

“How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind! If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient—at others, so bewildered and so weak—and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond controul! We are to be sure a miracle every way -- but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting, do seem peculiarly past finding out.”— English novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817), Mansfield Park (1814)

The image accompanying this post shows Frances O’Connor as Fanny Price, the character who says the above words, in the 1999 film adaptation of Mansfield Park.

Quote of the Day (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, on Life and Memory)

“Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.”—Colombian Nobel Literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928-2014), Living to Tell the Tale: An Autobiography, translated by Edith Grossman (2003)

Quote of the Day (Samuel Johnson, on ‘The True Art of Memory’)

"The true art of memory is the art of attention. No man will read with much advantage, who is not able, at pleasure, to evacuate his mind, or who brings not to his author an intellect defecated and pure, neither turbid with care, nor agitated by pleasure. If the repositories of thought are already full, what can they receive? If the mind is employed on the past or future, the book will be held before the eyes in vain." —English man of letters Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), Idler #74 (Sept. 15, 1759)

Quote of the Day (Michel de Montaigne, on Needing a Good Memory Before Lying)

“It is not without good reason said ‘that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying.’ I know very well that the grammarians distinguish betwixt an untruth and a lie, and say that to tell an untruth is to tell a thing that is false, but that we ourselves believe to be true; and that the definition of the word to lie in Latin, from which our French is taken, is to tell a thing which we know in our conscience to be untrue; and it is of this last sort of liars only that I now speak. Now, these do either wholly contrive and invent the untruths they utter, or so alter and disguise a true story that it ends in a lie. When they disguise and often alter the same story, according to their own fancy, ’tis very hard for them, at one time or another, to escape being trapped, by reason that the real truth of the thing, having first taken possession of the memory, and being there lodged impressed by the medium of knowledge and science, it will be difficult that it should not represent itself to the imagination, and shoulder out falsehood, which cannot there have so sure and settled footing as the other; and the circumstances of the first true knowledge evermore running in their minds, will be apt to make them forget those that are illegitimate, and only, forged by their own fancy. In what they, wholly invent, forasmuch as there is no contrary impression to jostle their invention there seems to be less danger of tripping; and yet even this by reason it is a vain body and without any hold, is very apt to escape the memory, if it be not well assured.”—French essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), “On Lying,” in The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton and edited by William Carew Hazlitt (1877)

Quote of the Day (Elie Wiesel, on Hope in Memory)

“Is there hope in memory? There must be. Without hope memory would be morbid and sterile. Without memory, hope would be empty of meaning, and above all, empty of gratitude.”— Romanian-born American writer, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), address at “Days of Remembrance” ceremony, U.S. Holocaust Museum, Washington DC, April 2002 

Quote of the Day (Margaret Atwood, on ‘The Collective Memory’)

“The collective memory is notoriously faulty, and much of the past sinks into the ocean of time to be drowned forever; but once in a while the waters part, allowing us to glimpse a flash of hidden treasure, if only for a moment.” —Canadian novelist, poet and essayist Margaret Atwood, The Testaments: The Sequel to The Handmaid's Tale (2019)

Quote of the Day (Tove Ditlevsen, on Childhood and Memory)

“Childhood falls silently to the bottom of my memory, that library of the soul from which I will draw knowledge and experience for the rest of my life.”— Danish poet, fiction writer, and memoirist Tove Ditlevsen (1917-1976), Childhood (Vol. 1 of The Copenhagen Trilogy, translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman) (2021)

Song Lyric of the Day (John Lennon and Paul McCartney, on the People and Places ‘In My Life’)

“All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all.”—John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “In My Life,” performed by the Beatles on their LP Rubber Soul (1965)
 
Even with their very different sensibilities, John Lennon and Paul McCartney both cited “In My Life” as among their favorite Beatles songs.
 
It may be a product of advancing years, but the same goes for me.
 
It’s hard to believe that two young men, still only in their mid-20s, could create a tune of quiet reflection and affection for what had passed out of their lives. But, I guess, Joni Mitchell did much the same thing with “Both Sides Now.”

Quote of the Day (Melissa Dahl, on Why the Teenage Years Stay So Long in Your Memory)

“There’s a reason why your teenage years stay with you. Perhaps you've heard of the reminiscence bump, a term psychologists use to describe the way the episodes of our lives that occur between the ages of ten and thirty tend to be recalled more vividly than those that occur earlier or later in life. Researchers have a few theories to explain the phenomenon; maybe, for instance, these memories stand out because of their novelty. It makes sense that you would remember your very first kiss more than your very eleventh kiss. But beyond that, throughout our life span, the moments that take prominence in our memories are those that are linked to our self-concept. During your awkward teenage years, you are laying the foundation for the path you'll follow as an adult—you join the school newspaper and see your name in print for the first time, or you take a volunteer tutoring job after school and realize you want to be an elementary school teacher. You carry your teen self around with you for life in part because these are the years you become yourself in the first place.”— Health and psychology journalist Melissa Dahl, Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness (2018)

I have noticed the “reminiscence bump” occurring among myself and others in my age group especially lately as so many of our contemporaries pass away. In the aftermath of their demise, we summon up memories not just to give shape to their lives, but also to better understand our own.

Quote of the Day (Melissa Errico, on Music, Memory and History)

“Music is all about how we turn big questions about memory and history into the personal ones of living in and out of the past. A lot of my job as a performer is to make the archival past available to people, American Songbook stuff. I try to make it occur now—not just for my emotions, for your emotions. I think it’s very healing. Nostalgia is sort of a pejorative word, but it’s an essential feeling. Nostalgia suits me because I can speak on its behalf. I have history now, but I didn’t have it before. While other people are saying, ‘Oh, poor you; you’re an older actress,’ I’m thinking, Are you kidding me? I’ve never had more information to share. I’m not just an information bearer. I try to take in information, but my next step is to make it raw and expansive and natural and available.”—Singer-actress Melissa Errico quoted in “Soapbox—The Columnists: WSJ. Asks Six Luminaries to Weigh in on a Single Topic. This Month: Nostalgia,” WSJ.com, October 2019

Quote of the Day (Marcel Proust, on How the Days in Our Lives Are Not Equal)

“[I]n our life the days are not all equal. To reach the end of a day, natures that are slightly nervous, as mine was, make use, like motor-cars, of different ‘speeds.’ There are mountainous, uncomfortable days, up which one takes an infinite time to pass, and days downward sloping, through which one can go at full tilt, singing as one goes.”—French novelist Marcel Proust (1871-1922), Swann’s Way, Vol. 1 of In Search of Lost Time, translated from the French by C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1913-1927)

This past weekend marked the 150^th birthday of Marcel Proust, and before the time passed by irrevocably, I really had to take note of it here.

I would not change my basic opinion of the French novelist expressed in this blog post from eight years ago. But the age of COVID-19 has certainly deepened my appreciation for the achievement on which his reputation rests: the seven-volume In Search of Lost Time, the result of his massive outburst of “involuntary memory.”

What other major novelist could have not merely survived our pandemic, but thrived? At the height of his powers, Hemingway would have gone crazy without the chance to fish, hunt big game, ski, watch bullfights, or simply drink at cafes. Dickens, unable to tramp the streets of London, would have felt cooped up inside with his wife and kids. Balzac would have bemoaned all those hours not spent in Parisian salons, soaking up social manners. Even Henry James would have withered if he couldn’t have taken afternoon teas with friends.

But Proust? He would have been made for this situation. Asthmatic, he would have been even more determined to shut out the world than he had been when he got down to work in his cork-lined apartment. Though it’s almost impossible to imagine, he might conceivably have produced even more than the 4,000-plus pages and nearly 1.3 million words of his magnum opus. There would have been nothing to distract him from his geyser of memory.

If there is any limit to the devotion of Proust fans, I have yet to discover it. Consider these examples: 

*The presence of multiple blogs paying tribute to him: “182 Days of Marcel Proust,” a journal about reading In Search of Lost Time at the rate of at least ten pages a day; “Proust for All,” with French and English posts; and “Reading Proust for Fun.”

*A book-length analysis of his life and art that functions as a kind of literary self-help manual: Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life; and,

*In a fictional example of this last title, the decision by the title character in Larry McMurtry’s Duane's Depressed (the concluding volume of his “Last Picture Show” Trilogy) to follow his lesbian psychologist’s prescription for his late middle-age melancholy: read Proust. (A remarkable plot development, considering that Duane’s reading to this point in his life has been limited.)

What also fascinates me about Proust is how he represents not just a kind of Mount Everest for readers, but also for filmmakers. For a medium that consists fundamentally of moving pictures, In Search of Lost Time can be a stark challenge: long on leisurely description and rumination, short on dialogue and plot.

But that hasn’t stopped screenwriters and directors from dreaming about bringing the novelist to screens big and small. In 1984, Volker Schlöndorff directed Swann in Love, with Peter Brook, Jean-Claude Carrière, Marie-Hélène Estienne, and the director himself taking a crack at Swann’s Way. Raúl Ruiz adapted Time Regained (1999), based on the last novel in the series; and Chantal Akerman's The Captive (2000) focused on the fifth volume, The Prisoner.

Both Luchino Visconsi and Joseph Losey were forced to abandon their plans to adapt In Search of Lost Time when they could not secure enough financing. But in Losey’s case, all was not lost.

In 1978, his collaborator, Harold Pinter, published the unproduced screenplay. Had it been filmed, it would have clocked in at about four hours—pushing the boundaries of visual narrative, just as Proust had stretched what future writers could do with the novel.

(See Peter Bradshaw’s 2013 essay in the British newspaper The Guardian on “the troubled history of Proust on film.”)

Quote of the Day (Steve Martin, on ‘The Memory Problems of Advancing Age’)

“There are several theories to explain the memory problems of advancing age. One is that the brain is full: it simply has too much data to compute. This is easy to understand if we realize that the name of your third grade teacher is still occupying space, not to mention the lyrics to ‘Volare.’ One solution for older men is to take all the superfluous data swirling around in the brain and download it into the newly large stomach, where there is plenty of room. This frees the brain to house more relevant information, like the particularly troublesome ‘days of the week.’"—Comic actor-writer  Steve Martin, “Changes in the Memory After Fifty,“ in Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from “The New Yorker,” edited by David Remnick and Henry Finder (2001)

None of this has ever happened to me. Nope. Can’t say it has. Nosirreebob!!!!

(Photo of Steve Martin taken by David Shankbone at the premiere of Baby Mama in New York City at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, Apr. 23, 2008.)

 

Quote of the Day (Marcel Proust, on Changing People and Fixed Memory)

“[N]othing is more painful than this contrast between the mutability of people and the fixity of memory, when it is borne in upon us that what has preserved so much freshness in our memory can no longer possess any trace of that quality in life, that we cannot now, outside ourselves, approach and behold again what inside our mind seems so beautiful, what excites in us a desire (a desire apparently so individual) to see it again, except by seeking it in a person of the same age, by seeking it, that is to say, in a different person.” —French novelist Marcel Proust (1871-1922), Time Regained, Vol. 6 of In Search of Lost Time (1927)

Quote of the Day (Jane Austen, on Memory)

“If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.”—English novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817), Mansfield Park (1814)