I read Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

"Relatability" is lately considered a sort of characteristic-of-age, solipsistic and superficial way of engaging with or evaluating art. But simultaneously it's also true that what got me on the path of world literature was a sense that they reflected elements of my inner life that the mainstream film, music, TV, age-appropriate anglophone novels etc. I was implicitly pushed towards basically denied. This is of course a prominent feature of Proust, particularly for a subjectivity that's a little gay, a little neurodivergent.

But it feels simultaneously limiting and selling short Proust's work to pitch it in that way, surely hetero neurotypicals also have a moment to moment experience so rich with the movements of consciousness and sensory detail... right? I really gobbled this up, like I was a 14 year old reading again. Another contemporary tendency is for short sentences to denote "immediacy," when they just come across as stilted and artificial to me... Here though, I swallowed many of these half-pagers whole. It's just how I think, which, again, where else are you going to find it?