It’s Furious Balancing

I’ve been meaning to come over here and do my continuation post on the madeleines, but I’ve just not gotten around to it. All my pictures are on my hard drive at home, and I’m not at home at the moment.¹

Anyway. Memories. I read somewhere — I am always reading little tidbits of information and never remembering the source — that taste and/or smell is the sense most likely to evoke the strongest, most vivid recollections. Hence, Proust and his madeleines; the crumbs and the lime blossom tisane call forth the house in Combray where his family spent the Easter holidays, where the young Marcel could not sleep without his mother’s goodnight kiss.

My own experience with sense and memory is much more prosaic.

It was “smell” and not “taste” that made me (literally) stop in my tracks as I was walking in Ann Arbor one summer day. It was ungodly hot², the humidity was hovering around 137%, and I was walking home to my (non-air-conditioned) apartment after work. As I came out our back door, I was nearly knocked sideways by the strong breeze blowing through the alley behind the building. This is the alley we share with a few other downtown businesses, most notably a cafe. The garbage cans in the alley had been simmering all day, so this breeze was thick enough to stir with a spoon, let me tell you. There were some lingering fumes from a recent delivery truck.

Heat. The sharp smell of rotting food and diesel fuel.

I was brought up short. This was the scent of…

(pause for dramatic effect) …

Nairobi.

I spent six months studying abroad my junior year at the University of Nairobi (literature, religion and sociology, primarily). This was back in the day when Nairobi was fairly stable. No riots and exploding embassies and such.³

Kenya is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful places on earth, and here my most vivid memories of it were elicited by the smell of garbage.

I told you this was prosaic.

Speaking of prosaic, I’ve discovered that I can blame Mickey Mouse (in addition to Sonny Bono) with my inability to get the last two volumes of the new Viking/Penguin Proust translations in the United States until 2018.⁴ In order to prevent such a classic film as “Steamboat Willie” entering the Public Domain — quelle horreur! — Mr. Bono authored the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. You can read more about this travesty here and here.

Mr. Bono’s smacking headlong into a tree seems like justice to me. Unfortunately, the Mickey Mouse Protection Act became law 10 months later, Sonny or no Sonny, and Steamboat Willie can rest easy (rest easily, whatever).

I, on the other hand, need to fork out nearly 14 British pounds sterling⁵ (I wish I could insert the funky symbol for such) for Time Regained.

It’s not even the hardcover.

* * * * *

1. /wave Hi, boss! Hi, law firm! I’m sitting here quietly typing, so no worries! [↩]
2. N.B. Anything over 75 degrees Fahrenheit is ungodly hot as far as I’m concerned [↩]
3. I’ve actually been in the American embassy there, including one occasion when there was a free screening of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey [↩]
4. Actually, I already have the new translation of The Prisoner and The Fugitive — in one volume. I have no recollection whatsoever of how that came into my hands. It’s definitely the British printing. [↩]
5. $26.00, American [↩]

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Books, Proust. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.