How Proust Can Change Your Life

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There are few things humans are more dedicated to than unhappiness. Had we been placed on earth by a malign creator for the exclusive purpose of suffering, we would have good reason to congratulate ourselves on our enthusiastic response to the task. Reasons to be inconsolable abound: the frailty of our bodies, the fickleness of love, the insincerities of social life, the compromises of friendship, the deadening effects of habit. In the face of such persistent ills, we might naturally expect that no event would be awaited with greater anticipation than the moment of our own extinction.

Someone looking for a paper to read in Paris in the 1920s might have picked up a title called L’Intransigeant. It had a reputation for investigative news, metropolitan gossip, comprehensive classifieds, and incisive editorials. It also had a habit of dreaming up big questions and asking French celebrities to send in their replies. “What do you think would be the ideal education to give your daughter?” was one. “Do you have any recommendations for improving traffic congestion in Paris?” was another. In the summer of 1922, the paper formulated a particularly elaborate question for its contributors:

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