On Proust

Proust's great novel would be even more delicious if he hadn't changed the boys to girls. There are real women too, producing two incompatible levels of reality. The meditations on love and lust are exquisite but the substitution undermines the honesty: what he is saying is no longer true or, sometimes, credible. Too bad. I suppose he had to do it, but I wish we could read what he wanted to write and actually had to say.