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2010 THIRD PLACE / NO ENTRY FEE CATEGORY
In Love, Reading
By Charlotte Lucy Latham
I was reading Proust when I discovered what love was. I ran to meet a friend at
the local Chinese restaurant and was late for the simple reason that I did not
want to put the book down. I was some pages from the end of Swann’s Way
and enthralled. Every moment of reading was a joy. Having to work during the day
seemed a terrible separation, so I kept the paperback copy on the corner of my
desk to remind myself that when the day’s work of grant writing, manuscript
revision, and phone calls was over, I could begin reading it again even as I
turned off the computer in my office, even as I walked through the February
wind, sidestepping construction, remaining under city lamps the one block to the
subway station that would take me home to read some more. I realized that though
only in the first volume of six, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this
book. “I am in love!” I exclaimed to my friend as I rushed through the
restaurant to the table where he sat peacefully until I dropped my purse,
removed my coat, greeted the hostess who ignored the disturbance my entry had
created and collapsed into the seat where I gulped water before continuing in my
excitement.
I became sufficiently convinced that Proust’s book was my future that I changed
my life by applying to graduate school, leaving my job, moving apartments and
settling into the piles of reading that were required if I was going to spend my
life in search of lost time. Building my studies of Proust, I discovered that
his novel sent Virginia Woolf into ecstasies that nearly ended any further
writing of her own, “My great adventure is really Proust. Well- what remains to
be written after that?” I sympathized enormously but still consumed by reading,
writing remained a merely academic affair.
My education continued when one winter I found myself asked to read To The
Lighthouse. I found my high-school copy on the shelf and started to read
through not only Woolf’s novel, but also the scribbles and markings in the
margins which I had made that senior year when her work altered my perceptions,
shifting my awkward inward gaze outward. On the back cover, I found the autumn
note, dated 10/10/97, “I am so in love with this book. It’s painful to read it
and realize there’s nothing for me to write about that she hasn’t already said
so beautifully. It’s love.” I had apparently given my heart away, years ago, to
another author.
In between other books, I found a living person to love as well. The feelings
were no different than Woolf, then Proust, had inspired. I searched for words,
descriptions, expressions. Unlike my experience with Woolf and her experience
with Proust, I could not remain silent in response to his words, in part because
he painted so his words were few, but also because I did not want to parrot his
statements. Nor could I, like Mrs. Ramsey, leave the sentiments stirring,
triumphantly withholding the words desired. I wanted him to hear my own
feeling-formulations, so I wrote him about my favorite readings, which led me to
read more, and more profoundly.
Then one day I wrote him a letter, not about a book I was reading, but about a
reading of my heart. The page turned into several and though designed for him,
became a project dedicated to Woolf and Proust as well. I have been writing ever
since.
Though Proust is the reason I now find myself in front of a classroom,
introducing the subtleties of words and stories my students are discovering for
the first time, Woolf encouraged me to go seeking even earlier. And if I were to
keep going back, I could count others whom I must not dishonor with my neglect.
But, I give Proust and Woolf a particular place for having shown me how to
expand into love. That I loved their works in the quiet of a room of my own did
not prevent me from sharing the same feeling with another. And, perhaps most
importantly, both of them encouraged me to keep looking for new words to love,
whether written or spoken, while the man I love sends me out looking for my own
words every day.
Congratulate Charlotte for her wonderful piece at
seecll@gmail.com
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