Highland Park

I had been planning to post on Training, which seems to be the Master’s departure point both for self-reflection and his legacy of writing about this process of self-observation. Montaigne’s Madeleine if you will. But I’ve become distracted, and that posting will have to wait. Because right now it seems more pressing that I write about Highland Park and its underappreciated virtues.

I’ve been tasting Highland Park 12 with some regularity lately, because Tony G has it behind the bar at Max. Highland Park, as we all know, is produced on Orkney Island, at the northernmost scotch distillery. And although it’s often lumped together with the Islay scotches, it really resembles the highland malts, smooth, flavorful, but not in the least bit peaty or smoky. And even lacking the bite or spice found in a Talisker. Just good scotch whisky.

Tonight, just for the hell of it, I sampled the 12, the 18, and then a taste of the incomparable 25. From this comparison, I could discern only a slight improvement in how smooth and drinkable the whisky is as it moves up in age. That’s not a knock on the older malts; rather, an indication that the 12 is remarkably smooth and mellow for its age. As one moves up to the older malts then, the big change is found not so much in texture, but in flavor.

The 18 opens slowly; at first, it tastes much like the 12, but after a moment the flavor expands, grows, enlarges, and lasts. One great thing about the older Highland Parks is the long aftertaste. Some whiskies lose their taste almost immediately; or worse, leave an aftertaste with a totally different character, medicinal, or bitter. Highland Park 18 leaves a smooth and consistent taste even after the whisky is no longer on your palate. For my money, the 18 is a far better malt than the much acclaimed Macallan 18, and at only half the price of Macallan. But the 18 is nothing compared to the 25, which opens up with a veritable explosion of flavor, the taste of which seems to linger and linger forever, or at least until the next taste. The 25 remains the best whisky I’ve ever tasted. And after all, it’s really about the taste, not the name, not the reputation, and not the price.

Glenmorangie, Ardbeg, and Highland Park 25

A couple weeks ago, Danny and I attended another scotch tasting. These events are purportedly an opportunity to taste a few varieties of malts, to learn a bit more about the process of distilling and aging scotch whisky, and perhaps to buy a bottle or two. More accurately, they are just another excuse for drinking whisky; and in this case, several glasses of whisky.

Laid out before us at the tasting were placemats with six circles; inside each circle there was the name of some malt we were to sample that evening; on top of the circles were placed six sturdy glass tumblers; and then two guys from the friendly neighborhood purveyor were making the rounds, pouring a sample of each malt into one of the six glasses. There was an older guy (our age) and a younger guy doing the pours. And the younger guy came to our table first, pouring about an ounce and a half of Glenmorangie 10 into the first of six glasses. Are we drinking six glasses like that? I asked. Danny told the kid to pay me no attention; his pours were fine; he could give us as much scotch as he wanted. One advantage, of course, of the generous pour system, is that the customer is more likely to purchase at night’s end, after tasting all six malts, and after suffering considerable impairment of judgment.

Mostly we drank Glenmorangies that night, and I’m already a devotee of Glenmorangie 10. It’s light, smooth, and an excellent choice for drinking before a meal. Of the various Glenmorangies we tasted that night, however, our collective favorite was the 12 aged in burgundy casks. By now, we’ve all had several varieties of malts aged in wine casks, sherry casks being the most common. Sherry gives the scotch a sweet mellow character, making it very accessible. Often, when introducing a novice to single malts, I use something aged in Sherry (Macallan 12, or Aberlour 15), because they are so likeable. The problem though is that sometimes the sherry begins to dominate the flavor of the malt, and even though the whisky is easy to drink, it loses some of the distinctive character of single malt scotch whisky. What I liked about the burgundy aging was that it was more subtle, with less sweetness in the whisky. But this is not a drink for every day; it’s distinctive, and I could see that I might tire of it if I drank it too often. Best drunk after a meal, when one might be otherwise inclined to have a cognac, or a port. A nice dessert whisky.

The surprise of the night was Ardbeg. Ardbeg is the peatiest of the Islay whiskies, and only the 10 is typically available around here. It has a huge flavor, but be forewarned: it really is peaty, even more so than Lagavullin or Caol Ila. The funny thing about this whisky is that it’s almost colorless; it has almost no tint to it. And the other surprises are that it’s rather smooth for a 10 year old, and pretty affordable. But as I mentioned, this is probably not for beginners. You need to know that you like Islay scotch before buying Ardbeg.

Lastly, just for the record, after recently settling a difficult case, I bought myself a bottle of Highland Park 25, which remains the very best whisky I have ever tasted. Smooth, velvety smooth, and enormously flavorful. The taste lingers in your mouth long after it’s been swallowed, and there is no aftertaste, no change whatsoever. Just a long long delicious finish. Worth every penny.

Proust and Marcel, Chicken and Egg

In Swann’s Way, Marcel’s childhood foretells Proust’s artistic achievement. Marcel, the protagonist of In Search of Lost Time, explains how he spends afternoons reading while the family is summering at Combray. And the impact of these afternoons on the young narrator is striking: “[T]hose afternoons contained more dramatic events than does, often, an entire lifetime.” For Marcel, the characters in his books are more real, and their emotions more moving, than anyone or anything he encounters in daily life. Not long thereafter, he becomes enchanted with the writer, Bergotte, a friend of Swann’s, whose perceptions are more real, and whose metaphors are more accurate, than anything poor Marcel can experience in the real world.

If one accepts Lost Time as a chronological narrative, the child Marcel finds his everyday experience overwhelmed, surpassed, and transcended, by what he finds in his books, just as the adult Proust will recognize the power of his artistic achievement. But in fact, Lost Time is not at all chronological, but proceeds backwards, from the starting point in The Past Recaptured when Marcel finds himself overcome by waves of involuntary memory, when his childhood comes rushing back to him, and when he himself is changed into Proust, the novelist, who will return to his room and write Lost Time.

So when Proust does that, when he puts pen to paper, which has really come first? Did young Marcel truly see the world this way, as Proust describes it in Swann’s Way? And if so, were his memories simply buried within himself, only to be released years later when Proust began to write? Or did the epiphanies that Proust experienced as a young man somehow recreate or redefine his childhood, changing forever what had occurred previously. Marcel may have spent summer afternoons lost in his childhood reading, but was it Proust, who later realized art’s transcendence, who then elevated those lost afternoons into something more meaningful and real than the everyday world of Combray? From our perspective, it’s not possible to know which came first, for whatever happened to Marcel has been changed irrevocably by Proust, when he created the world in which young Marcel now eternally resides.

Proust being Proust

Bloom maintains that the central theme of Proust is sexual jealousy – Swann for Odette, and Marcel for Albertine, among others. Jealousy becomes a “mask for the fear of mortality.” But isn’t Proust’s jealousy simply one manifestation of his obsessions? The novel of four thousand pages begins with a night from Marcel’s childhood. The family is at Combray; the aunts are always around; Swann comes for dinner; and Marcel is denied his mama’s goodnight kiss. We have page after page explaining how the bedside kiss is so much more desirable that a kiss downstairs, which requires a solo journey up the stairs, into the bedroom, and then off to sleep. This night, Marcel schemes to send a note to his mama, thorough the maid Francoise, asking for his kiss. It all goes awry; but in a surprise twist, Marcel’s father, who ordinarily has no patience for any of this nonsense, not only refrains from punishing Marcel, but seeing how distraught he has become, rewards him by having his mother spend the night with Marcel, in the room’s other bed.

Keep in mind, for this singular work of thousands of pages, Proust’s only novel, by which he will be remembered through all eternity, he has selected this most peculiar story as his introduction to all his readers. In fact, historically, this is all most of Proust’s readers ever know of him, for there are dozens of students, maybe hundreds, who have read about the Madeleine, and then no more. So to all of them In Search of Lost Time is a story about a boy who can’t fall asleep, for want of his mama’s bedtime kiss. Now, if we want to take Bloom to the extreme, this too is a tale of sexual jealousy. But I don’t think so. I think Proust is an obsessive, really an obsessive’s obsessive. And the jealousy is only a symptom, albeit the predominant symptom, of his obsessions. I guess I’m just splitting hairs here: Bloom acknowledges Proust’s compulsiveness, but centers the book on sexual jealousy. I find Proust obsessive about everything, perhaps most prominently about the objects of his desire.

For me the bigger story is the gradual recognition, foreshadowed by the incident with the Madeleine, that Proust’s art will not only survive him, but will become his key to immortality. Bloom speaks of how, at the book’s end, the “Narrator almost imperceptibly fuses into the novelist Proust.” And how the last volume, previously called The Past Recaptured, rescues the work from “the literary romance of jealousy.” I hate to keep taking issue with the master, but isn’t it more accurate to say that this novel was created backwards. The epiphanies from the last book, the flood of involuntary memories that wash over Marcel, bring the rest of the story to life. Perhaps in original real time, the story proceeded from childhood to conclusion, but in the mind of the author, it went the other way. The epiphanies came first; then the past came back. And after all that, Marcel went back to his room, in which he secreted himself for the rest of his life, so that he could write this enormous book, the book that rescued him from all his obsessions, and most of all from his fear of death. Because the book gave Proust his immortality. Art transcends life. That’s the story of Remembrance of Things Past, or In Search of Lost Time, or A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.

Bloom says that Proust’s art provides him with the only escape from his jealousy. I think it’s more accurate to say that his art provides him with escape from life. Not just the daily troubles of life, about which Marcel obsessed, and which so rarely gave him any happiness. But also from the fundamental condition of life – namely, that it doesn’t go on forever. Marcel’s life might have been brief, as was Proust’s, but here it is a century later, and we’re still reading and writing about all of it.

Proust Again

Just to say it seems daunting, but I’m reading Proust again. I’ve been inspired by John, who wants to write software that will read Proust for him, and save him the endless hours of wading through Combray, Odette, Gilberte, Charlus, the Guermantes, Albertine et al, in order to find Proust’s epiphanies. There’s no denying Proust’s genius; after all Bloom places him in the canon of western literature. And the larger themes of Remembrance of Things Past, or In Search of Lost Time, as it’s now apparently known, are more vividly and acutely realized than in any other work of literature, perhaps any work of art. But the problem for the reader, and for John’s software, is figuring out exactly how to find these insights amid thousands of pages of trivia.

In the overture, which is after all fifty pages about Proust’s bedtime anxiety on a single night at Combray, Swann pays a visit after having sent a case of wine to Proust’s two aunts. The aunts are reluctant to thank Swann directly or openly, for some reason having to do with their idiosyncratic sensibilities. So they make oblique allusions in their self-consciously clever conversation, recognized only by themselves as expressions of thanks. Swann’s father wonders why they are so ungrateful and they protest, insisting that they have so graciously thanked Swann for the wine. Really, who could possibly give a shit about any of this? In fact, is there a person on the face of the earth who could care in the least about either of Proust’s aunts? Probably not. And in four thousand pages, I found it hard to care much at all about anyone other than Marcel, the narrator, too often not caring much about him either. Still, after a couple hundred pages of this trivia, or gossip, or whatever you wish to call it, Proust startles the reader with insights so profound that they stand out years after the memory of all the other details has faded. Much like Proust’s own involuntary memories, which seem to arise out of nowhere and which bring lost time back to life in all its vivid details.

So John’s software, if it’s going to work, must do more than figure out how long Proust’s sentences are (pretty damn long), or how many times he mentions Gilberte or Albertine (easily in the millions). Rather, it will have to cull from the thousands of pages these few transcendent moments. But then stripped of the details and circumstances in which these epiphanies originally came to life, will they have the same power to move the reader? Of will the computer transform this epic work of art into Proust’s little book of proverbs?

By the way, in case anyone is interested, I’m reading the new translation, so it’s not like I’m subjecting myself to the same four thousand pages for the second time. The new translation is nice, and perhaps a bit easier on the reader, and maybe also a truer rendition of the original French. But even with the most elegant translation I still find myself oppressed by Proust's interminably obsessive reflections on his various objects of desire, whether his mother, or Venice, or Gilberte. Enough already.