Wednesday, April 11, 2007

The importance of having a diary!

I was reading this great book called 'Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen' a bit reminscent of Michael Cunningham's 'The Hours' in which he links Virginia Woolf and two of her readers interconnected intrinsically to each other, who are affected by her life and and her writing to the extent that it shapes their life and their tragedies. In Madame Proust the writer profiled is the great Marcel Proust, whom we get to know through the diary of his mother Jeanne Proust. It is her story and the story of two other women - the story tracks the prosecution of Jews in Europe, the events start from 1891 and we glimpse those through the eyes of Jeanne Proust as she worries about her son Marcel his activities his ill health and his vocation choices [ ironically not knowing what a great writer he will one day be] a woman who is translating her diaries and the woman who is the mother of the translators ex boy friend. I haven't yet finished the book but it's very delicately written and assails the senses and transports you into the atmosphere like Proust does. Anyway I have totally digressed from the point of this blog which was not to review the book but to make a resolution [which I have made thousands of times before] to start writing in my diary. Memory is the most ephemeral and easily lost of all things we have. When we go through any experience till its fresh in our minds we think we will never forget just as the way we are almost immortal in our own eyes [who honestly thinks they could die in this instant?] we think we will remember but when we try to remember things even just a year past they are faint traces, no more! SO I MUST START A DIARY!

1 comment:

Blur Ting said...

Contrary to what you think, I find your musings rather interesting. Have more faith in yourself!