Proust’s essayistic and static formal deficiencies generated an unprecedented rendering of time

Evidence

And what obtains in the infrastructure yields an analogy for developments in the other arts as well. I choose more or less at random from the history of the novel the example of Proust, where an initial predilection for the essay as a mode of discourse combines with an initial predisposition to the long static scene as an existential experience of the present to produce an unexpected organizational innovation: for Proust expands his formal scene to the point where the essay-style digressions and disquisitions may be intercalated in succession with as little disruption as might be produced by the change of subject or of conversation partner in the course of a long afternoon reception. Meanwhile the scenes themselves, as immense as they are, are now reconnected by topic, in much the same static fashion in which the essay preselected its subject matter: by means of the hours of the day or the stops on a train, or ultimately indeed, by the very geographical identity of the Swann and Guermantes ways themselves. Yet the result of this rather static organization, initially determined by a storytelling deficiency in the Proustian imagination, is a more complex rendering of the passage of time than had hitherto been possible in conventional linear narration. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 59

Categorization

• XREF: Jameson reading formal ‘deficiencies’ as productive of innovation connects to the Frankfurt dictum about contradiction driving determinate resolution; also echoes Lukács’s theory of the novel on form emerging from problematic conditions. — connects to: Proust alludes to the unpresentable through time while Joyce does so through writing itself — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 506; Proust’s novel is a progressive ladder of expressive forms, not circular

Broader Connections

• Proust alludes to the unpresentable through time while Joyce does so through writing itself #corroborates (0.85) — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 506
• Proust’s novel is a progressive ladder of expressive forms, not circular #complicates (0.72)