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Caroline

by Danny Fisher on December 13, 2010

caroline2

My mother took me to an office of the Educational Alliance on the Lower East Side.  I was looking forward to having a knish at Katz’s delicatessen afterward.  My mother spoke with an administrator, who was typing information on a form – how much my father made, that kind of stuff.  We were applying to summer camp – this would be my third and final year.  I had plenty of trepidation about returning that summer.  I was afraid that Caroline would be back, and I would be so terribly embarrassed to see her again.  I hoped she wasn’t coming back.

vacamas lake 2

Caroline was my first girlfriend.  I had been eleven the last summer – she was twelve.  When we sat on a big boulder outside the dining hall in the afternoon, Caroline moved my arm around her shoulder.  She was my girlfriend, so I guessed that was ok.  But then she took my hand, and moved it down so that my fingers lay over her breast.  I wasn’t sure if that was accidental or deliberate.  I gently moved my hand back up.  But she pulled it back again so that it brushed lightly against her breast.  I could feel her nipple through her blouse, and it was a strange thing to touch.  I felt awkward and embarrassed.  I wished she wouldn’t do that.  I hoped no one else saw.

vacamas jumping

We walked hand in hand down the dirt road from the dining hall, back to the cabins. Behind us, some girls were laughing, and one girl asked Caroline where she got her dress.  Caroline seemed indignant, and told me to ignore the stupid girls.  The girls kept teasing and taunting.  “Why don’t you wear one of your own dresses, Caroline?”  I didn’t know what they were talking about.  Caroline seemed embarrassed by the girls’ remarks.  I didn’t know what the big deal was about her dress.

vacamas crossroads

Caroline and I turned into a narrow dirt side road and waited while the other girls walked past us.  They continued to jeer at Caroline as they walked by.  “Whose underwear you wearing, Caroline?” asked a plump black girl.  Caroline ignored the comment.  I wondered what they were talking about.  When the girls were gone and we were alone, Caroline took me in her arms, and kissed me.  She tried to slip her tongue between my lips, and I resisted.  I thought it was a strange thing to do.  The tip of her tongue sharply pierced my tightly pressed lips; it stung.  I would have been content with just a regular kiss.  Later on, boys told me about tongue kissing – but that was later on.  Although I didn’t understand Caroline’s way of kissing, and didn’t particularly care for it, I felt that this made her my girlfriend, that she was mine, and I was hers.  She had had a previous boyfriend, a tall, skinny Irish kid with reddish-blonde hair and freckles.  I was her new boyfriend.

vacamas tug of war

The night of the social, the lights in the lodge were turned low.  Caroline and I were grinding to the slow music.  We were holding each other as tight as we could, and I could hear her breathing, and feel the beating of both of our hearts, and we were both very warm against each other, and I didn’t know how to dance, but all I had to do was just squeeze her tight and move our pressed bodies ever so slowly to the music, while shuffling my feet awkwardly against the pine wood floor.  “What’s it all about – ” the dance lasted an entire lifetime – “Alfie…” The song ended, and Caroline separated from me with a slight smile.  Out of nowhere, the skinny Irish kid with the blondish-red hair appeared and asked Caroline for the next dance.  She said sure.  I was flustered and hurt.  She was mine, and the Irish kid was her past.  They danced intimately, the way Caroline and I had just danced.  I was left to watch, awkwardly.  Now I thought she played a great big trick on me.  She wasn’t mine anymore, and was going back to him!

vacamas up on hill

I left the lodge, and climbed up a thickly wooded hill that overlooked the lodge.  I climbed higher and farther until the lodge was distant and small, glowing amber in the blue-black night.  I was alone in the woods, and I dropped down on my knees, and cried to the forest, where no one heard me but the crickets, but I could hear myself.  I had lost Caroline.

The social was over, and I walked back to the lodge, where boys and girls were milling around outside.  Caroline was alone, and she walked up to me, asking where I had been.  I asked her where the Irish kid was, and she was puzzled.  “Aren’t you back with him?”  “Nonsense,” she replied.  “We just danced together, that’s all, silly!”  She took my hand, and then we walked down the dirt road, arm in arm.

vacamas campfire

At the end of that summer, I overheard some girls from Caroline’s cabin talking about her.  I walked closer to the group of girls to listen, and they spotted me.  “You ought to know about your Caroline,” one girl said.  “She’s so poor she’s got nothing to wear.  Whatever you’ve seen her wear doesn’t belong to her.  She’s borrowed clothes from every one of us – even from the counselor.  She doesn’t even own her own underwear.  Dirt poor, and she won’t admit it, either.  She hasn’t told you nothing, right?”  I shook my head.  “White trash,” the girl muttered, in explanation.

vacamas people

Caroline had given me her phone number, but I never called her; I wanted to forget about her.  I hoped I didn’t run into her at The New York World’s Fair, which was in Queens, where I knew she lived.  Now it was time for another summer season at Camp Vacamas, and I hoped to God Caroline would not return.  I sat on an old, worn couch in the office of the Educational Alliance as my mother answered the questions of the administrator, who continued to clack away loudly at her typewriter.  I glanced at the table in front of me, and picked up a brochure for the camp.  The cover read, “Camp Vacamas – A Summer Experience for Disadvantaged Youth.”  I was mortified.  Disadvantaged?  Is that what I was?  I was less than other kids?  Then I thought about Caroline and how she couldn’t even afford to wear her own underwear, and wouldn’t come out and talk about it, either.  I could wear my own clothes, at least.  But I didn’t want to see Caroline, and I didn’t want to go to some camp for unfortunate, lesser, miserable kids.  I tugged at my mother’s sleeve and told her I didn’t want to go back to camp.  She said I didn’t have to, as the administrator pulled the completed application out of the typewriter.

vacamas katz's

My mother and I ate knishes at Katz’s delicatessen on East Houston Street.  I ended up going back to camp that summer, after my mother promised to buy me a leather baseball glove and a real baseball.  Caroline didn’t return that summer, and I never saw her again.

* * *

Excerpt from a novel I have been writing called “White Sand Falling.”

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My Brother Jack Is Single

by Danny Fisher on November 19, 2010

As Jack and I work to rebuild our lives and careers, Jack is facing an additional adjustment in his personal life.  After many years of marriage, Jack and his wife have decided to go their own separate ways.

I told Jack today that this is just one more area in his life in which he should look forward to a bright future and not dwell on the challenges of the past.

jack

Jack Fisher

I told him that he should change his facebook status to “single” – but I think he is not mentally ready.

So at the risk of annoying him deeply, I decided tonight to “out” him to the world as an eligible bachelor.  Jack is more than just eligible – he is a creative, sensitive film director and producer, co-founder with me of City Lights Media and  now Jack is president of Fisher Klingenstein Films.  He is truly one of a kind.

Jack, good luck in your new personal status as “single” and I look forward to the day when you find romance once again – or when romance finds you!

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In The Beginning

by Danny Fisher on November 18, 2010

israel stamp

I sat on a record, and it broke. Everyone in the room laughed and I felt humiliated. That is my earliest memory. In Haifa, Israel, where I was born. I was three.

* * *

When I was a kid, I thought that when you grew up, you had to move to another country and learn another language. I wondered where I was going to go when I grew up, and what language I would learn, and why one couldn’t just stay in the country they were from. My parents, my relatives, and all of my parents’ friends were from someplace else.

When we arrived in the South Bronx in 1958, I was four years old. My brother Jack was six. There was a great snowstorm that year, and everyone in my family says, to this day, that when I saw snow for the first time, I cried out in Hebrew that white sand was falling from the sky. I don’t remember speaking Hebrew.

south bronx with signThe South Bronx

* * *

My uncle bought me a Timex watch. It cost six dollars. I lost my watch soon enough. While walking in the park near our house, I was approached by two Puerto Rican kids. They asked me the time. I was scared. I said it was a quarter to three. One held my trembling arm, as the other stripped me of my watch.

***

My father was a tailor. When we lived in Israel, he made suits for Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan. In the Bronx, he made some of our own clothes. I wore a bathing suit made of thick wool at Orchard Beach that itched like hell.

bengurion 1

David Ben Gurion, 1948

* * *

Food was different. I can no longer taste what I tasted then. At Orchard Beach in the summer, my mother would make sandwiches of buttered, freshly baked rye bread, with sliced fresh green peppers sprinkled with salt. We ate the sandwiches, along with hardboiled eggs. The salty ocean air mixed with the aroma of our picnic lunch. I have been unable to recapture this taste. At home in the Bronx , I ate from a bowl of sour cream, into which I crumbled pieces of bread – there was nothing more delicious in the whole world. My mother made a dish I loved that I haven’t eaten since – mashed potatoes, mixed with flaked pieces of fried chicken skin.

***

The Bronx was sloped, and that made for great sledding in the winter and roller-skating in the summer. Roller skates would fit onto the bottom of your sneaker, and you would tighten them with a key. It was important not to lose your key. We would roll fast down the steep hill of Topping Avenue. In the snow-covered winter, the sledding was exhilarating. We were disappointed when our sleds were stolen.

Some kids next door had a set of plastic army figures, which we would line up on the sidewalk into great armies that faced each other at battle in a great big war.

* * *

A cousin of mine once told me that everyone would, at one time in his life, experience a very bad event. That worried me for years – decades actually. Every time I slid down the sliding pond in the park, I wondered if I would fall off, and whether that would be my bad event. I feared it, yet, in some ways, I wanted to be over it so I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. Some bad kids threw a rock at my brother Jack in the park, and it cut his ear badly. There was blood, and in the hospital, Jack had to have his ear stapled. I couldn’t imagine how you could have your ear stapled back on to your head, the way you would staple together two pieces of paper. I felt really bad for him. But I thought this might have counted as his bad event, and so, in a way, I also felt he was lucky to be over it. I imagined that my bad event would produce blood and that was scary.

* * *

tv

One day a big box arrived at our apartment. It was our first television set, with a rounded black and white picture tube and rabbit ear antennas you adjusted to get good reception. Someone told me that there were little people inside the television that acted in the shows, and I used to try to look inside the television from the back to see if I could find them.

The first television show I remember watching as a family was the Eichmann trial. Eichmann was in a glass booth, and I didn’t understand anything about the trial. I just knew that it was very important. And that it somehow had something to do with my parents, but I didn’t really know what.

eichmannEichmann in Jerusalem

* * *

It is amazing to me now how many years it was before I realized that I was a child of parents who survived Hitler’s concentration camps. It wasn’t as if I never knew about it. It’s just that I never consciously thought about it. It was after I graduated college, when I was about twenty-two, and I was experiencing bouts of anxiety that I decided to see a therapist. I had been in therapy for months, when one session the therapist asked me if there was anything about my upbringing that differentiated me from others. I thought and thought, but did not come up with anything. The therapist told me I was a child of concentration camp survivors. My first thought was, so, what the hell does that have to do with anything? And then it hit me hard, and very deep, and I thought for a long time, for every day and every year since, that this heritage was at the core of my being.

* * *

Excerpt from a novel I have been writing called “White Sand Falling.”

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Reinventing Myself – A Progress Report

by Danny Fisher on November 17, 2010

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass…

I started this blog 11 months ago, and described in its first post my losing a company I founded and ran for 27 years, with 400 paid employees last year.  The past 11 months have been devoted to rebuilding.  Part of rebuilding is figuring out what I had in fact lost – and what I had gained.  Part of rebuilding is reinventing myself.  Part of reinventing myself is searching for what my self is.

walt whitman

Walt Whitman

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look

through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self…

I am much happier now than when I owned a large company, which ultimately became a treadmill rather than a career.  I now work out of my Park Slope brownstone, where I walk through Prospect Park as the glittering leaves turn yellow, gold and reddish brown, just as Walt Whitman walked the same Brooklyn streets more than a century ago.  And I can really call my work my home.

I have had the privilege of connecting with so many people over the past 11 months, some people I have not seen or communicated with for decades, many new people I met and continue to meet, and reconnecting with friends and colleagues in the industry.  I am so grateful for the support and friendship of so many.

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the

beginning and the end,

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,

Nor any more youth or age than there is now,

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,

Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn…

I am grateful that so many have either retained or regained their confidence in me and placed their trust in me – investors, corporate clients, industry creatives and business professionals.

I have gone from established business to running a start up.  And I like that.

Production business is picking up, busy with commercials, corporate work and videos for the web.  Co-producing a Broadway musical (“Josephine”) and developing two television series.

And perhaps the real success story so far is Jack’s and my relationship with producer/financier Alan Klingenstein, together with some outside investors who have faith in us to develop and implement a new model of acquiring and distributing independent film.  We are now working for Fisher Klingenstein Films, and stay tuned for more progress reports to come.

And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,

And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,

And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women
my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of the creation is love,

And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,

And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,

And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap’d stones, elder, mullein and
poke-weed.

- Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass

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Cup of Tea

by Danny Fisher on November 11, 2010

cup of tea

“And as in the game wherein the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little pieces of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch and twist and take on color and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, solid and recognizable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, towns and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.” – Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

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My Brother Joe’s Artist Reception

by Danny Fisher on October 3, 2010

Please join me at an Artist’s Reception for my brother, Joe Fisher, this Thursday evening in New York City – details below.

The show features work spanning decades of my brother’s painting career. His new work is fresh and exciting and it is a joy to see him continue to work to dazzling effect.

joe art 2

“Strike Through” 2010, Acrylic on Canvas, 48 x 48 inches

When and where:

Thursday, October 7th

7pm – 9pm

SFTA Gallery
Synagogue For The Arts
49 White Street
New York City

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Dad’s in Heaven with Nixon

by Danny Fisher on July 10, 2010

dads in heaven

I have seen a beautiful and moving film called “Dad’s in Heaven with Nixon,” and I am very pleased that the new company I work for, Fisher Klingenstein Films, has acquired this great documentary for domestic distribution. The film can currently be seen on Showtime, but the film is also available to pre-order on DVD right now – simply click this banner:

The film deals with one family’s coming to terms with a son who is autistic, as well as a father who suffered from bipolar disorder. The film resonates with me and my brother Jack very closely, as it in some ways mirrors our first documentary, “A Generation Apart,” which deals with the impact of the Holocaust on families of survivors, including our own family. “Dad’s in Heaven with Nixon” deals with the impact of mental illness on one family – filmmaker Tom Murray’s. It is a stunning and exceptionally moving look at the way this family has dealt with mental illness.

Tommy & Chris @ The Beach--DVD CoverTom and Chris Murray

We are proud to be associated with the film in another way – our film “Unforgotten: Twenty-Five Years After Willowbook” deals with the aftermath of the infamous Willowbrook State Institution – a scandal that was uncovered by Geraldo Rivera three decades ago. The Willobrook scandal made a huge impact on society’s treatment of the developmentally disabled. Our film “Unforgotten” continues to be seen all over the country each day, by individuals, in schools and health organizations, and has become a teaching and motivational tool among health professionals. We are so proud to help make a difference.

On a more personal and intimate level, my brother Jack is bipolar and my son Aaron also was diagnosed with bipolar disorder four years ago. I know firsthand the heartbreaking challenges in dealing with this illness and how it impacts not just the individual with the illness but the entire family.

It is a wonderful feeling to produce films that inspire and inform as well as entertain. It is also highly rewarding to serve as a distributor on films that matter, and I am hopeful that many of you will have the opportunity to see this heartwarming movie.

Please check out the website for the movie here.

The New York Times gave the movie a very well-deserved rave review here.

I encourage you to join the Facebook page for the film, called “Dad’s In Heaven With Nixon,” become a fan, and help spread the word in promoting meaningful documentary film.

If you are so inclined, please consider reposting this blog entry on your Facebook page to help us get this important film get all the attention it deserves.

So many wonderful things are coming together for me and my brother Jack and our colleague Joel. Please stay tuned for much more news to come!

Be among the first to pre-order the DVD by clicking: Dad’s in Heaven with Nixon

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I Have Been Ignoring My Blog – Here’s Why!

by Danny Fisher on June 4, 2010

I am thrilled to be returning to my blog after a too long hiatus. Things have been really encouraging for my brother Jack and me in our efforts to rebuild our careers after we lost our previous company, City Lights Media, less than one year ago, and we are working on quite a number of projects and ventures, and for that we feel truly blessed. In Nicholas Ray’s posthumous autobiography, “I Was Interrupted,” he expresses appreciation at the end of his life, saying “I have been given a second chance, and there are no second chances.” So I thought I would tell whoever may want to know some of the things I have been up to.

I have just come on board as a producing partner on my very first Broadway musical, “Josephine,” about the life of Josephine Baker. The creator and lead producer is the extremely talented and successful Ken Waissman (“Grease,” “Torch Song Trilogy,” “Agnes of God”) and I am flattered that he asked me to join him in producing what I think will be a stunning Broadway musical for the 2011 season.

josephine-baker-jazz-pearls
Josephine Baker

Jack and I are producing television commercials for various clients, and we are grateful for their support. We have become “Mad Men” as the company we now work for, Fisher Klingenstein Films, serves as ad agency as well as production company, and I have been enjoying doing the creative as well as the production of our commercials.

We are very close to a green light on a television documentary series called “The Lost Songs of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison & Starr,” which takes a unique look at the history of the Beatles – it is a dream project created by Steve Boyle, and I am proud to be serving as executive producer.

The screenplay Jack and I wrote with recent Academy Award nominee Oren Moverman, called “Interrupted,” about the life of Nicholas Ray, has come to the attention of Al Pacino, who loves the script and intends to star in the role of Nick Ray. The female lead of Susan Ray (who was just 18 when she began her relationship with the 60 year old director in 1969) is now being cast and it is an extremely exciting process. We hope to be in production this fall, with one of America’s greatest living directors at the helm: Phil Kaufman (“The Right Stuff,” “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” “Quills”).

I am working with Kyra Sedgwick on helping to set up a superb independent film she is producing and co-starring in, called “Story of A Girl,” directed by Laurie Collyer (“SherryBaby”). Also co-starring is Kevin Bacon and Terrence Howard. The script moved me to tears and I am proud to be associated with the movie.

kyrasedgwick
Kyra Sedgwick

Since I no longer have 400 employees and a huge machine to feed, as I had at City Lights, I am free to explore new terrain, including outside the media business. I am working on a number of real estate ventures and enjoying the learning process with my friend Tzippy Spear.

I am heading out to Los Angeles next week with my new colleague Alan Klingenstein – who has produced a number of memorable films over the past decade, including the acclaimed “Trumbo” – and we are exploring a project that is completely outside the realm of anything either of us has done – a major global recycling venture. We are working with my friend and colleague Jonathan Zilli, who was head of international licensing at Paramount Pictures for 11 years, as well as serving as head of MTV Films Europe, where he produced six films. He has become an expert in the world of recycling and renewable energy and I thought – why not explore this opportunity – I am free to do anything I want to do, and I am eager to learn new things.

We are distributing films once again through Fisher Klingenstein Films, and have a happy relationship with Screen Media Ventures, with whom we have an output deal for digital distribution, and who are wonderful people to work with. Our first three iTunes films launch in two weeks.

My friend Alan Klingenstein says I remind him of the regular on Ed Sullivan who used to spin multiple plates – because I seem to be all over the place. I thought at first he was criticizing me for being scattered, but he clarified that he was complimenting me, was impressed with how much I have been able to put together since losing my company less than a year ago, and eager to collaborate with me on spinning some of my plates. I am looking forward to our three day trip to Los Angeles next week, and to being guests of Jonathan Zilli, who is also a superb cook – I am sure we will not be disappointed.

I attended a breakfast that my close friend and mentor Richard Rubenstein invited me to last week, which was sponsored by the Kabbalah Center. Like others of Richard’s events, this was truly inspiring and I learned a lot. One thing I was encouraged to do was to think BIG and follow my VISION to the hilt and make no downsize accommodations to my vision and objectives just because we are in a worldwide great recession. That is a reality that must be dealt with, for sure, but I do not need to let the world’s downsizing cause me to downsize my own vision.

I am grateful to so many people who have been supporters of mine in the past, as well as the many new friends I have been making.

I hope to keep up with In Search of Lost Time and share my thoughts with anyone who cares to drop by for a visit.

Often these days I am reminded of Sally Field’s moving Oscar acceptance speech, “You like me, you really like me.” I know those lines have been made fun of, but I feel liked more and more these days, and after a very painful last year, I am, in the words of Sean Stephenson, reinterpreting the past to replace struggle with gratitude.

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Please Support My Friend Steve Fialkoff

by Danny Fisher on March 26, 2010

Steve Fialkoff is a very talented film editor and we worked together for many years. He is now facing blindness at the age of 56. Please help Steve achieve his goal and remember to count all the blessings in your life.

fialkoff

You Can Make A Difference in my life by Steve Fialkoff

You probably don’t know what Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) is – I didn’t either, that is until age 25, when the doctor told me I would be blind sometime in my 60′s. Well I am 56 now and his prediction, unfortunately seems to be on target. I should be depressed but I am not. That’s because of you. Yes, you. I know that your donation is going to be the one that funds the next biggest breakthrough in sight restoration. I’m very serious. The last time we asked my friends for support, a few months later, a nine year old boy’s sight was restored. This treatment was funded mostly by this foundation. There’s another reason; I am getting a little scared of facing the ever increasing darkness that invades my life everyday. Thank you
Steve

Steve’s goal is to raise $5,000 for the Foundation Fighting Blindness, and as I post this, he has achieved $781 toward his goal. Please consider helping Steve reach his goal.

You can make a donation here.

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I became interested in Marcel Proust, for whose monumental masterpiece my blog is named, when I worked as an assistant to director Nicholas Ray at his acting and directing workshops at the Lee Strasberg Institute. In addition to the dynamic workshops of Nick Ray, I had the opportunity to sit in on a workshop given by the legendary Lee Strasberg, in which he chose a volunteer from the student audience and used the student to demonstrate the technique of emotional recall. That left an indelible impression on me, as the student was transported into another place, and all his senses were recreated – relived – to the most minute detail. The recollection of the student’s senses evoked the recall of the emotional state – as close as one could get to reliving the actual experience – it seemed a work of hypnotism on the part of Lee Strasberg.

strasberg

Lee Strasberg

I had the further opportunity to personally experience such an intense emotional recall during Nick Ray’s workshops, using the techniques of Lee Strasberg combined with Nick Ray’s intensely personal directing style. I was able to relive a moment in my life, and felt that I was “there” for the period in which I was in the “spell.” Nick Ray and Lee Strasberg both had spoken about Proust in reference to the subject of the recollection of the senses and emotional recall, and about Proust’s famous madeleine and cup of tea, the taste of which unleashed memories in Proust resulting in several thousand pages and seven volumes which feature over 2,000 characters.

proust picture

Marcel Proust

I was intrigued, and began reading “Remembrance of Things Past,” later retitled to the more literal translation “In Search of Lost Time.” I was tremendously captivated by the novel and read some of the volumes several times. It is my favorite book, the deepest and most profound book I have ever read – yet I am certain that I have not yet captured most of its meaning.

The book is not an easy read – it is admittedly tedious (but well worth it, at least it was for me) – and some of the sentences are so long that it is extremely hard to follow. I have been thinking for a while about a sentence I remember reading in “In Search of Lost Time” that was so incredibly long and I was eager for another read of it. I couldn’t possibly search for this sentence by perusing the seven volumes – that would likely take me years – but through the power of the internet, I tonight rediscovered Proust’s longest sentence – possibly the longest sentence in all of literature – and I am pleased to reprint this 958 word sentence in its entirety as a special bonus feature available exclusively (well, not really) here:

“Their honour precarious, their liberty provisional, lasting only until the discovery of their crime; their position unstable, like that of the poet who one day was feasted at every table, applauded in every theatre in London, and on the next was driven from every lodging, unable to find a pillow upon which to lay his head, turning the mill like Samson and saying like him: “The two sexes shall die, each in a place apart!”; excluded even, save on the days of general disaster when the majority rally round the victim as the Jews rallied round Dreyfus, from the sympathy–at times from the society–of their fellows, in whom they inspire only disgust at seeing themselves as they are, portrayed in a mirror which, ceasing to flatter them, accentuates every blemish that they have refused to observe in themselves, and makes them understand that what they have been calling their love (a thing to which, playing upon the word, they have by association annexed all that poetry, painting, music, chivalry, asceticism have contrived to add to love) springs not from an ideal of beauty which they have chosen but from an incurable malady; like the Jews again (save some who will associate only with others of their race and have always on their lips ritual words and consecrated pleasantries), shunning one another, seeking out those who are most directly their opposite, who do not desire their company, pardoning their rebuffs, moved to ecstasy by their condescension; but also brought into the company of their own kind by the ostracism that strikes them, the opprobrium under which they have fallen, having finally been invested, by a persecution similar to that of Israel, with the physical and moral characteristics of a race, sometimes beautiful, often hideous, finding (in spite of all the mockery with which he who, more closely blended with, better assimilated to the opposing race, is relatively, in appearance, the least inverted, heaps upon him who has remained more so) a relief in frequenting the society of their kind, and even some corroboration of their own life, so much so that, while steadfastly denying that they are a race (the name of which is the vilest of insults), those who succeed in concealing the fact that they belong to it they readily unmask, with a view less to injuring them, though they have no scruple about that, than to excusing themselves; and, going in search (as a doctor seeks cases of appendicitis) of cases of inversion in history, taking pleasure in recalling that Socrates was one of themselves, as the Israelites claim that Jesus was one of them, without reflecting that there were no abnormals when homosexuality was the norm, no anti-Christians before Christ, that the disgrace alone makes the crime because it has allowed to survive only those who remained obdurate to every warning, to every example, to every punishment, by virtue of an innate disposition so peculiar that it is more repugnant to other men (even though it may be accompanied by exalted moral qualities) than certain other vices which exclude those qualities, such as theft, cruelty, breach of faith, vices better understood and so more readily excused by the generality of men; forming a freemasonry far more extensive, more powerful and less suspected than that of the Lodges, for it rests upon an identity of tastes, needs, habits, dangers, apprenticeship, knowledge, traffic, glossary, and one in which the members themselves, who intend not to know one another, recognise one another immediately by natural or conventional, involuntary or deliberate signs which indicate one of his congeners to the beggar in the street, in the great nobleman whose carriage door he is shutting, to the father in the suitor for his daughter’s hand, to him who has sought healing, absolution, defence, in the doctor, the priest, the barrister to whom he has had recourse; all of them obliged to protect their own secret but having their part in a secret shared with the others, which the rest of humanity does not suspect and which means that to them the most wildly improbable tales of adventure seem true, for in this romantic, anachronistic life the ambassador is a bosom friend of the felon, the prince, with a certain independence of action with which his aristocratic breeding has furnished him, and which the trembling little cit would lack, on leaving the duchess’s party goes off to confer in private with the hooligan; a reprobate part of the human whole, but an important part, suspected where it does not exist, flaunting itself, insolent and unpunished, where its existence is never guessed; numbering its adherents everywhere, among the people, in the army, in the church, in the prison, on the throne; living, in short, at least to a great extent, in a playful and perilous intimacy with the men of the other race, provoking them, playing with them by speaking of its vice as of something alien to it; a game that is rendered easy by the blindness or duplicity of the others, a game that may be kept up for years until the day of the scandal, on which these lion-tamers are devoured; until then, obliged to make a secret of their lives, to turn away their eyes from the things on which they would naturally fasten them, to fasten them upon those from which they would naturally turn away, to change the gender of many of the words in their vocabulary, a social constraint, slight in comparison with the inward constraint which their vice, or what is improperly so called, imposes upon them with regard not so much now to others as to themselves, and in such a way that to themselves it does not appear a vice.” – Marcel Proust, “In Search of Lost Time”

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Excerpt from a novel I have been writing called “White Sand Falling.”

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