I imagine many of us are working our ways through Proust and various critical writers, in this spirit, I post a quotation from Lawrence R. Schehr's book, The Shock of Men: Homosexual Hermeneutics in French Writing. I have been working through several pieces of his writing and this quotation caught my attention, especially in light of many discussions throughout the year on this very question.
Furthermore, I would state that any valid reading of [In Search of Lost Time] should be able to engage the question of homosexuality. An interpretation could not successfully deal with the questions relating to homosexuality in the novel cannot be considered effective in explaining the work. I am not saying that everyone has to talk about homosexuality, but that every reading should be able to engage the question. Thus, to take the most banal example, a psychoanalytic reading that departs from or arrives at the Oedipus complex may miss the mark if that alone is the 'answer,' if the text is somehow perceived as a symptom of the failure to resolve the Oedipal crisis, meaning that homosexuality is seen as secondary to the 'normal' world. (34)
I am working through many of these concerns in my own writings and find this to be a very provocative thought. I wonder . . . how many of us are guilty of "invalid" readings of Proust?
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