My Year With Proust - Day 342

   It occurred to me that Swann must be getting tired of waiting for me.  Moreover I did not wish to be too late in returning home because of Albertine, and, taking leave of Mme de Surgis and M. de Charlus, I went in search of my invalid in the card-room.  I asked him whether what he had said to the Prince in their conversation in the garden was really what M. de Breaute (whom I did not name) had reported to us, about a little play by Bergotte.  He burst out laughing: "There's not a word of truth in it, not one, it's a complete fabrication and would have been an utterly student thing to say.  It's incredible, this spontaneous generation of falsehood.  I won't ask who it was that told you you, but it would be really interesting, in a field as limited as this, to work back from one person to another and find out how the story arose.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 728

Normally I would not cull out a little section like this one, but for an obvious reason it spoke to me today.  Marcel and Swann are discussing the scope and the speed with which a lie travels.  There is nothing profound here, but I happened to reread it the day that the latest Trump/Russian/sex report dominated the news cycle.  On the one hand I don't really care if Trump paid prostitutes to pee on him, although, truthfully, I suspect the opposite is true - that he paid to piss on them, which would fit in with the symbolic nature of carrying out the act in the bed his enemies had shared and it also represents his general misogyny.  As usual, people are focusing on the salacious nature of the story and missing the bigger issue of ties between Russian agents and members of Trump's team.  However, even if the story is complete fabrication, it is another example, if, as the excellent Sanford Zale would opine we need another example, of how fast lies spread in the age of the Internet and social media.  At the same time, if it is a lie it's difficult for me to have any sympathy for Trump since his entire campaign was based on lies, which we, in almost Orwellian speak, simply refer to post-truth.