Still Life with Feeling. Week 41: Henry James' Spoils of Poynton and Marcel Proust's Swann's Way

Stepping inside an Impressionist painting? Yes, please.

Week 41 of Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities Course made me realize something startling: these books weren't picked for my enjoyment--and yet I loved them anyway. This week’s readings, Henry James’s The Spoils of Poynton and the “Overture” to Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, carry us right into the early twentieth century.

I approached James with dread, expecting a slow narrative, but instead I found a moody, infinitely readable novel built around obsession, property, and desire. With a small cast and dialogue-driven scenes, it feels almost theatrical, no surprise since James briefly wrote plays. But it's also chilling in its fixation on “stuff” and ownership. This one was a winner.

Proust, meanwhile, surprised me with prose that felt dreamlike, luminous, and unexpectedly funny. I had expected dense, boring, and pointless--Proust was none of those. The famous madeleine scene becomes a meditation on memory that expands from a sensation as small as a crumb into an entire world.

Though radically different on the surface, James and Proust share a similar impressionistic quality, finding vast meaning in subtle gestures. A brilliant pairing--and a week I adored, even if Ted doesn’t care.

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