It was summer, it was stinking hot in a small town, I was fifteen and bored. The town librarian had been giving me grief since I was eleven and in sixth grade, when she issued her first decree that I was not "old enough" to check out what was becoming the first of a long line of books that I had to fight against. read. It was also the first of many times that one or both of my parents trudged to the library to insist with equal firmness that it had no right to restrict my choices since I had their permission to read whatever I wanted. The summer of my thirtieth year. was particularly difficult for this poor beleaguered woman. His worst day came when I insisted on reading all of Proust, every one of Thomas Wolfe's novels, and while I was at it, Joyce's Ulysses as well. After all, I told myself, I had two weeks to keep these books and I was a fast reader. So I took them home, on the old iron glider under the arbor, and propped myself up on a pile of pillows and dug. with the same joy that most people reserve for hot fudge sundaes. I fanned through the pages and decided to read Look Homeward, Angel first because I love the way all of those words are layered on each page. Wow! The exuberant gush of all these words! The torrent was overwhelming, the words blurred, I lost meaning. I knew I had to slow down somehow before I had to admit that the librarian was probably right and that maybe I wasn't really "old enough" to understand all of this. So I turned to Proust, finding relief in his exquisite nuanced precision and rhythm. My love for all things French was born with Proust, as I marveled at his privileged people and their luminous lives. Who were they really, I wondered, and was all of Paris like this, and if so, how soon could I get there? Over the next two weeks, I went back and forth between this unlikely duo, Wolfe and Proust, sweating from the July heat and the emotional impact of Brother Ben's death (read at fifteen ), then I refreshed myself with the soothing and elegant rituals of Monsieur Swann and company.