Then she would find her tongue and say: "My ______" or "My darling ______" followed by my Christian name, which, if we give the narrator the same name as the author of this book, would be "My Marcel," or "My darling Marcel." After this I would never allow a member of my family, by calling me "darling," to rob of their precious uniqueness the delicious words that Albertine uttered to me. As she uttered them, she pursed her lips in a little pour which she spontaneously transformed into a kiss. As quickly as she had earlier fallen asleep, she had awoken.
Marcel Proust, The Captive, p. 69
For five-hundred-sixteen posts I've been referring to the protagonist of Remembrance of Things Past as Marcel, and here, only two-thousand three-hundred pages in we've learned that his name is Marcel, sort of. From the very beginning of this process I've been sloppy, sort of, in my methodology by using the names Proust and Marcel interchangeably, which they are, sort of. It gets right to the heart of Remembrance of Things Past because as you read you continually ask yourself: is the essentially unnamed protagonist, now named as Marcel (or maybe earlier, we're talking thousands of pages), a fictional character or is this "merely" an autobiography? And, of course, the answer is yes and no, sort of. As we've discussed repeatedly, and harvesting material from Cynthia Freeland's Portraits and Persons, the hero of your autobiography is a fictional character, which Proust would mainly agree with because, as he points out repeatedly, each person is actually many different people, and it's a struggle to regain time, and it is memory that forms the basis of human identity. So, is Marcel Marcel? Sure, sort of.
Truthfully, Marcel Proust is actually a great name, and it's probably a good thing that I had not started Remembrance of Things Past back in my twenties or my son would have ended up wish some variation of it. One of the nice people I've met online through this process goes by the name of Marcelita Swann, although, truthfully, I'm not certain whether that's her real name or her literary nom de guerre. If she loves Proust, which she does, then it's a great choice, but if her parents gave her that name then I guess she had no other choice but to love Proust (unless she hated Proust because of it; although it's way too cool of a name to hate). With one of the world's bad names - Gary is always a loser character, usually the virginal friend of Rick, the cool kid - and Scudder is such a harsh sounding last name - having Evans, as reasonably gentle name for a middle name is the only thing that makes it OK, but even that is tainted by the fact that I couldn't fall back and use it as a replacement for Gary - I have name envy. If only my parents had thought of the advantages of calling me Max Power. As is well documented I am a complete Charles Dickens nut, so if I were to write something I'd doubtless fall into the trap of either ripping of Dickens or, like him, choosing names that somehow spoke to the character's, well, character: Ebenezer Scrooge, Uriah Heep, Miss Havisham, Wilkins Micawber, Samuel Pickwick, Fagin, Quilp, Estella, Artful Dodger, Pip, Esther Summerson, Sydney Carton, Peggotty, Avel Magwitch, James Steerforth, Fezziwig, Bob Cratchit, Edward Murdstone, Betsy Trotwood, Alfred Jingle, Compeyson, Jacob Marley, Tiny Tim, Jerry Cruncher, etc etc etc. I know I've probably made this point before, but it seems that one of the biggest differences between Proust and Dickens is that with Dickens the single least interest character in every novel is the main character (with the exception, obviously, of David Copperfield), whereas all the side characters have more life and vitality, whereas with Proust there aren't really any other characters except as props for him to brood over.
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