Mithila Reads

“How Proust Can Change Your Life” by Alain de Botton is the first one I chose this year read philosophy seriously. I had never been acquainted with Marcel Proust’s work earlier, though I had heard good things about Alain de Botton. I have two books on my shelf, “The Art of Travel” and this one. I leave a life-long fan of both of these authors.

We should read other people’s books in order to learn what we feel, it is our own thoughts we should be developing even if it is another writer’s thoughts which help us do so.

How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton

To create this masterpiece, De Botton cherry picks paragraphs from Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time”, excerpts of letters Marcel wrote to various people in his life (including but not limited to his mom), and publicly known stories of his many quirks. These paragraphs are placed into neat buckets of chapters which can be read in a standalone fashion. The list of the chapters and who I feel would benefit the most from reading it is as follows:

How to Love Life Today
for the uninspired people who are bored of the way life just is: ongoing cycles of day and night, wondering what they can do to really live their life, instead of watching it pass by. Even though it may seem grim, the threat of an imminent death surely helps sort out one’s priorities.

How to Read for Yourself
for the people who constantly say that something they recently read is “so relatable”. (I’m not being mean, I really mean this). In Proust’s words: “The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself.”

How to Take your Time
for every person like me who loves to write really long sentences, which convey deep emotions like unveiling the multiple layers of an onion. for every person who claims to be too busy to enjoy life. You can appreciate art more only if you spend time with, and spend time on it after you have left the gallery / put down the book.

How to Suffer Successfully
for the chronically ill, mentally or physically. for students studying for exams they consider to be tough. Proust states that there are two methods by which a person can acquire wisdom, painlessly via a teacher or painfully via life. That really resonated with me.

How to Express your Emotions
every writer who wants to improve themselves must read this one. de Botton talks about the problem Proust had with people resorting to cliches while writing. Writing cliches is something I detest too, so I was super glad that I found a kindred spirit in this book.

How to be a Good Friend
if you, like me, feel like you’re an inadequate friend, or wonder why friendships come so easily to others. The painfully accurate thoughts about conversations with friends (not the Sally Rooney book) and the realities of friendships as an adult made me scream.

How to Open Your Eyes
if you crave the life you don’t have right now. The concept underlying this chapter is pretty simple: if your reality does not match the expectation you have of what a good life should be, you should form a more attainable expectation of what a good life is. Maybe the life you currently have is a good one too. Or maybe you just haven’t opened your eyes to appreciate the beauty of what is around you.

How to be Happy in Love
if you’re a lover. in a relationship, or not. if you’re a lover of life. of art. of happiness. Many of us feel that the chase is more exciting than actually settling down with someone / actually owning fancy clothes or art. Proust succinctly underlines why this is so, and what we can do to change that.

How to Put Books Down
aptly placed at the end of the book. for readers who tend to idolize books that have changed their life. As de Botton writes, “A genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.”

The experience of reading this book was just like discovering a new city. Concepts of a road, of a building, of people walking and living are constant. But the entirely new panorama awes you. You find yourself zeroing on things that you can take home from this new city. You leave with a newer and better appreciation of the concept of a city in general. Reading de Botton’s book felt exactly like this. Cobwebs in my mind on the common concepts of love, friendship, books, writing and reading were neatly cleaned up. New thoughts were added to my brain like fresh flowers to a vase. Proust’s words helped me see my world with a better lens. The next book on philosophy I pick up will be much more useful to me, thanks to the useful lessons in this book.

The dreadfully accurate sentences in the book are as sharp as the aroma of freshly crushed spearmint. I could see my fears, my thoughts, my emotions expressed on paper. While reading the book daily, I kept the book away after a few pages, because there was just so much to absorb and read and learn.

I don’t know who I fell in love with more, Marcel Proust or Alain de Botton. Marcel Proust is eccentric, sarcastic yet generous. Alain de Botton has done a brilliant job giving me an insight into Proust’s mind. The way their voices merge together as one is surely breathtaking. I will certainly be leaving this book with a richer vocabulary for things I’ve felt throughout my life but was unable to express as clearly as these two authors have.

I do not think I will be able to pick up Proust’s 4,215 page monster of a book, but I surely would add it to my retirement TBR. However, Alain de Botton has surely crept into my auto-buy list.