Talking in my last post about how goodreads is driven by fashion, what could have been more uberfashionable last year than Proust. Boy, did the marketers have a field day selling the fans everything from a look at his bed to books they had to shell out hundreds for. Yes indeedy, if you weren’t buying Proust stuff and spending most of your time online talking about like how amazing he was, you just didn’t have a life.
All the more refreshing to be witness to this conversation yesterday at a nice little Italian place called The Mess Hall in Melbourne:
Manny: So has Australia been covered in Proust stuff this year too?
Sonia: No.
Manny: That’s amazing, in Europe it’s just like nothing but Proust.
Sonia: Well, I haven’t even heard of him. Maybe he’s just not that good a writer.
Yay for Australia.
A little tea, a little chat 