Proust, Paradise Lost, this blog

Here's a maxim you can have.

There's no way to say something positive about oneself and not come off badly.

Have you read IN A BUDDING GROVE? Proust tries to present himself as this precocious adolescent, and just comes across as self-absorbed and cocky.

Here's a question, though. Why should I take umbrage at Proust being cocky, at knowing how smart and witty he is? I think he is the smartest and the wittiest. I should be nodding in assent; "Yes, you *are* so great." Because, apart from this novel, that is how I feel. But, when he says it, it strikes a false note.

Milton uses this device against Satan in PARADISE LOST: Satan pretty much only talks about himself (CS Lewis calls it "incessant autobiography"), and so after a while, you kind of hate the guy, even though he starts off with all your sympathies.

This is also the premise of PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN. Any reader who *likes* Stephen has to be a total asshole. Or, at least, someone who sympathizes with precocious, self-absorbed adolescents. We can assume this would extend to other (self-absorbed) adolescents.

Anyways, my last few posts contained references to myself that were undeniable, stone-cold facts: I like these things, I read these books at a certain age, I do such and such for a living, etc. And like, as a rule of style, no matter what, those things, which admit of no contradiction, probably irked some people at least stylistically.

Have you ever read Ayn Rand novels? They are full of people who don't understand this point. People who, because they are successful, can't understand why everyone else is not interested in them as much as they are interested in themselves.

OK, that was a trick. I actually just wrote that last paragraph to demonstrate a point. When I wrote, "people who, because they are successful", the obvious implication is, that's me, and I would like to not be under the same delusion as these characters, *while* being successful. Now, no one wants to hear that I think I am "successful," although by the strictest definition, I imagine that I am. More than that, you don't even want me to align myself with a negative example of (fictional) successful types. And it's not because you don't like me, or because you would prefer that I not be or consider myself happy or successful.

No, nothing like that. It's just a rule of writing and psychology. But here's the literary part: it's why, for a while in PARADISE LOST, we can't stand God. Because he knows he's right. Now, that is tautological, because God IS rightness in its essence, and yet we would still prefer that God be a bit humbler. This is stupid of us, yes, but you know what? I just compared myself to God. I bet you are furious.