Everyone who had ever said that they wanted to read Proust “someday” found that someday had arrived, as Proust shot from deep in the middle of the alphabetized classics sections to the front shelf of top sellers.
It is an inside joke of history that its most exciting adventures inevitably end their careers as homework. Beheadings, rebellions, thousand-year wars, incest on the royal throne, electricity, art, opera, dogs in outer space. By this, the once-pop writings of Proust—like those of Cervantes before—had been quietly serving out an indefinite sentence in homework bins for generations. But now, Proust’s words were back to what they were originally intended to be: once again, kids cheated on their homework so they would have more time to read Proust.
“As a work of literature, simply beautiful … As a feat of translation, a thrilling surprise in a field that is, by definition, not prone to many surprises.”9
“Like the tea-soaked crumbs of its famous madeleine, J. C. Audetat’s vibrant new translation of Proust brings the full power of the past surging back towards us at full, thrilling force.”10
“Audetat blows the cookie crumbs off Proust and introduces him—nearly a hundred years after his death—as the voice not only of his era, but of ours.”11
“In its cracked-out vitality, Audetat’s translation blows the reader backward in his chair like he’s the guy in that iconic Hitachi Maxell speaker ad from the 1980s, except swap out that subwoofer for a madeleine with an electric current jamming through it.”12
“As delicious as a madeline [sic] cookie!”13
There was no reason, once people thought about it, that an American poet who could translate Spanish, and who lived in Paris, might not be capable of translating a work of French as well. But no one had thought to expect it, and so the surprise revelation that he knew two languages well enough to turn their respective masterpieces into modern translations of now-unparalleled quality meant that the work exhilarated not only on its merits but additionally for its audacity. The imagined picture of J. C. Audetat, famed popularizer of Don Quixote, casually huddled with his old-fashioned paper and pens in the midst of the beeping and buzzing cafés of modern Paris to bring Proust back into the modern mind, itself became an irresistible image that floated above the new classic like an invisible book jacket and built further, unprecedented anticipation for what was to follow.
Which was … what?
He started writing poetry again, but it didn’t come as easily. It was hard now to get past the self-consciousness—the silliness, really—of being such a well-established adult applying himself, seriously, to such a youthful joy.
A poet? Was that something to call oneself? Was that something to be?
He carried his old notebooks of poetry to the Café de Flore to see what he could learn. For hours, the notebooks sat on the table, and Audetat sat in dread. He wasn’t sure if he was hoping he would find it good, or bad, or which he feared more.
When he finally opened the notebooks, he found that he liked his old poetry. Loved it, even. It was young, unlike Audetat, and it was unafraid to be seen as foolish, unlike Audetat. But he also knew when he saw the poems that he wasn’t a poet anymore.
At least he had been one, once.
Maybe the timing just hadn’t been right. Maybe in the past, it would have been something. Maybe in the future, it would be something.
Now it was now, and now what?
Translator’s block: Does that exist? wondered Audetat.
Audetat left almost-Paris, reasoning that no one there would care too much about the English translator of Proust, and set out on a university tour of the United States. He spoke about the art of translation to full, grand auditoriums everywhere he went, the ones normally reserved only for visiting dignitaries and the most profane comedians of the day.
People didn’t know exactly how many languages Audetat spoke (his college transcripts revealed Latin, but no other clues) and that mystery had become part of his legend. But the one language that he spoke unquestionably well, in public and in private, was the off-the-cuff vernacular of his day.
“What’s next?” was the most anticipated question at Audetat’s lectures. It was usually the last question, too, as if the rooms somehow always had the collective intelligence to save their best question for the end.
“I have no idea,” Audetat would say. “Any suggestions?” He cupped a hand to his ear, knowing the audience would enjoy getting the last laugh.
“Anna Karenina!” “The Odyssey!” “Confucius! No—Mao!”