Introduction to Steel

I didn’t go on my first date until late in high school. Until then, I had been your fairly standard loser, more interested in books than girls; yet I harbored the suspicion that somewhere within me lurked a great romantic. The date (or so I thought) was a success; it was she, and not I, who initiated my first kiss. Later that week, she broke up with me on the grounds that having a boyfriend would interfere with her violin lessons—and in spite of the words of cynical friends, I’ve always believed this was the truth. What motive is too silly to ascribe to the half-formed personalities of high schoolers?

I was crushed. But shortly thereafter, I read my first volume of Proust—In The Shadow of Young Girls In Flower. Proust, and not the girl, was my first love; I was smitten, intoxicated. His teenaged hero visits a seaside resort and indulges in the most absurd, fickle, short-lived “love affairs” that could not have reminded me more of myself; but somehow he transformed his humiliation into something that brought me joy to read. And when, five years later, I at last finished all seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time, I found this had been the pattern of his whole life. Proust died alone in a tiny musty room, having slaved away through so many absolutely lonely nights to transmute his life—that is, the years before he plunged himself into artistic hermitude—into perhaps the greatest work of literature of all time. He committed suicide for Art.

It was about then I realized that being a “great romantic” has little to do with being loved, and—more painfully—with being able to love.

We live in a society of false values that gives us few real chances at happiness. Art stands as a permanent critique of society, exposing the false and helping us to the genuine—and in that sense, seems worth giving one’s life to. But what chance at human happiness does the artist have? Writing is full of the promise of a better life—but for whom? Christ told his disciples to “count the cost” before they followed him; I’ve counted my cost, and there are times, I’ll admit, when it seems high.

I’m young; young enough not to know with any certainty whether a life of art and “human happiness” are really exclusive. But I’m getting older. And I’m afraid the time will come when the choice I’ve made—if there really is such a choice—will become permanent.

And Proust won’t keep me warm at night…unless I install a fireplace.