Saturday Silly: Why You Shouldn't Read Proust

So I stumbled across this in "Rebel Angels," the anthology co-edited by my mancrush Mark Jarman. (By the way, remember my cranky rant against Edward St. Lucie-Smith, the hack who included more of his own poems than Dylan Thomas's in an anthology of contemporary British poetry? I take it back - "Rebel Angels" would be vastly improved by including some of Mr. Jarman's work.)

I tend to look up a least a little biographical information about the poets whose work I post, and I was flabbergasted by today's poet. Thomas M. (Tom) Disch wrote quite a bit of work with which I'm already familiar, including "The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World" (which I picked up for 50 cents in a Goodwill and have enjoyed quite a bit), and "The Brave Little Toaster"! I'd like to add a few more exclamation points but my conservative attitude towards punctuation will not permit me.

But "The Brave Little Toaster"! So I'll definitely be learning more about his work - apparently he was one of the first science fiction authors to become involved in game design, mostly text-based adventure games. Does anybody even remember those? And apparently, Philip K. Dick felt he was important enough to denounce to the FBI for some imagined crimes, the paranoid narc. 

But today I give you a sonnet about his apparent antipathy towards one massive explicitly autobiographical achingly tedious record-breaking tome. (Take note of his acidic description of the author, complete with almost homophobic undertones, strange coming from a man who was openly gay for the last half of his life.)

A Bookmark

Thomas M. Disch

Four years ago I started reading Proust.
Although I’m past the halfway point, I still
Have seven hundred pages of reduced
Type left before I reach the end. I will
Slog through. It can’t get much more dull than what
Is happening now: he’s buying crepe-de-chine
Wraps and a real, well-documented hat
For his imaginary Albertine.
Oh, what a slimy sort he must have been—
So weak, so sweetly poisonous, so fey!
Four years ago, by God!—and even then
How I was looking forward to the day
I would be able to forgive, at last,
And to forget Remembrance of Things Past.