I was idling at my keyboard, attempting to write something on Proust, facing a certain block, so I decided to search Twitter for Proust. What I noticed was the amazing number of times I saw this quotation pop up: "The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
What struck me was 1) The speed with which Twitter allows ideas to travel. I am assuming that not all the quotations were uttered spontaneously from a reading of Proust. Although not all of them were retweets the coincidence would be too extreme for some/most of them not to have their origin in another tweet (A worse example of this is on my other Twitter account, where I have been told three times in the last 12 hours or so that "he who laughs last probably doesn't get it"). 2) The fact that Twitter, which, to me, is based on a certain randomness of expression - against the authority based search of Google is the random thought search of Twitter, and yet we still have a different sort of authority, the authority of the quotation - the name after a quotation assuring us of its validity in human thought.
I was also tempted to ponder on the place for Proust in world of 140 character messages but stopped myself from this easy simplification. In the same way that people bemoan text messaging for damaging the English language, rather than enriching it with new forms of expression, surely Twitter and Proust can easily manage side by side - a time and a place for everything - and the number of people reading and enjoying (and finishing) Proust, from the evidence of my non-scientific Twitter search, is still very high.
What struck me was 1) The speed with which Twitter allows ideas to travel. I am assuming that not all the quotations were uttered spontaneously from a reading of Proust. Although not all of them were retweets the coincidence would be too extreme for some/most of them not to have their origin in another tweet (A worse example of this is on my other Twitter account, where I have been told three times in the last 12 hours or so that "he who laughs last probably doesn't get it"). 2) The fact that Twitter, which, to me, is based on a certain randomness of expression - against the authority based search of Google is the random thought search of Twitter, and yet we still have a different sort of authority, the authority of the quotation - the name after a quotation assuring us of its validity in human thought.
I was also tempted to ponder on the place for Proust in world of 140 character messages but stopped myself from this easy simplification. In the same way that people bemoan text messaging for damaging the English language, rather than enriching it with new forms of expression, surely Twitter and Proust can easily manage side by side - a time and a place for everything - and the number of people reading and enjoying (and finishing) Proust, from the evidence of my non-scientific Twitter search, is still very high.
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