-
So when I was eight years old,
-
a new girl came to join the class.
-
She was so impressive,
-
as the new girl always seems to be.
-
She had vast quantities of very shiny hair
-
and a cute little pencil case,
-
super-strong on state capitals,
-
just a great speller.
-
And I just curdled with jealousy that year,
-
until I hatched my devious plan.
-
So one day I stayed a little late after school,
-
a little too late, and I lurked in the girl's bathroom.
-
When the coast was clear, I emerged,
-
crept into the classroom,
-
and took from my teacher's desk the grade book.
-
And then I did it.
-
I fiddled with my rival's grades,
-
just a little, just demoted some of those A's.
-
all of those A's, and
-
-- (Laughter) --
-
I got ready to return the book to the drawer,
-
when hang on, some of my other classmates
-
had appallingly good grades too.
-
So, in a frenzy,
-
I corrected everybody's marks,
-
not imaginatively, not imaginatively.
-
I gave everybody a row of D's
-
and I gave myself a row of A's,
-
just because I was there, you know, might as well.
-
And I am still baffled by my behavior.
-
I don't understand where the idea came from.
-
I don't understand why I felt so great doing it.
-
I felt great. I felt great.
-
I don't understand why I was never caught.
-
I mean, it should have been so blatantly obvious.
-
I was never caught.
-
But most of all, I am baffled by
-
why did it bother me so much
-
that this little girl, this tiny little girl,
-
was so good at spelling?
-
Jealousy baffles me.
-
It's so mysterious, and it's so pervasive.
-
You know, we know babies suffer from jealousy.
-
We know primates do. Bluebirds are actually very prone.
-
We know that jealousy is the number one cause
-
of spousal murder in the United States.
-
And yet, I have never read a study
-
that can parse to me its loneliness
-
or its longevity or its grim thrill.
-
For that, we have to go to fiction,
-
because the novel is the lab
-
that has studied jealousy
-
in every possible configuration.
-
In fact, I don't know if it's an exaggeration to say
-
that if we didn't have jealousy,
-
could we even have literature?
-
Well no faithless Helen, no "Odyssey."
-
No jealous king, no "Arabian Knights."
-
No Shakespeare.
-
There goes high school reading lists,
-
because we're losing "Sound and the Fury,"
-
we're losing "Gatsby," "Son Also Rises,"
-
we're losing "Madame Bovary," "Anna K."
-
No jealousy, no Proust, and now, I mean,
-
I know it's fashionable to say that Proust
-
has the answers to everything,
-
but in the case of jealousy, in the case of jealousy
-
he kind of does, he kind of does.
-
This year is the centennial of his masterpiece,
-
"In Search of Lost Time,"
-
and it's the most exhaustive study of sexual jealousy
-
and just regular competitiveness, my brand,
-
that we can hope to have.
-
(Laughter)
-
And we think about Proust, we think
-
about the sentimental bits, right?
-
We think about a little boy trying to get to sleep.
-
We think about a Madeleine moistened in lavender tea.
-
We forget how harsh his vision was.
-
We forget how pitiless he is.
-
I mean, these are books that Virginia Woolf said
-
were tough as cat gut.
-
I don't know what cat gut is,
-
but let's assume it's formidable.
-
Let's look at why they go so well together,
-
the novel and jealousy, jealousy and Proust.
-
Is it something as obvious that jealousy,
-
which boils down into person, desire, impediment,
-
is such a solid narrative foundation?
-
I don't know. I think it cuts very close to the bone,
-
because let's think about what happens
-
when we feel jealous.
-
When we feel jealous, we tell ourselves a story.
-
We tell ourselves a story about other people's lives,
-
and these stories make us feel terrible
-
because they're designed to make us feel terrible.
-
As the teller of the tale and the audience,
-
we know just what details to include,
-
to dig that knife in. Right?
-
Jealousy makes us all amateur novelists,
-
and this is something Proust understood.
-
In the first volume, "Swann's Way,"
-
the series of books,
-
Swann, one of the main characters,
-
is thinking very fondly of his mistress
-
and how great she is in bed,
-
and suddenly, in the course of a few sentences,
-
and these are Proustian sentences,
-
so they're long as rivers,
-
but in the course of a few sentences,
-
he suddenly recoils and he realizes,
-
"Hang on, everything I love about this woman,
-
somebody else would love about this woman.
-
Everything that she does that gives me pleasure
-
could be giving somebody else pleasure,
-
maybe right about now."
-
And this is the story he starts to tell himself,
-
and from then on, Proust writes that
-
every fresh charm Swann detects in his mistress,
-
he adds to his collection of instruments
-
in his private torture chamber.
-
Now Swann and Proust, we have to admit,
-
were notoriously jealous.
-
You know, Proust's boyfriends would have to leave
-
the country if they wanted to break up with him.
-
But you don't have to be that jealous
-
to concede that it's hard work. Right?
-
Jealous is exhausting.
-
It's a hungry emotion. It must be fed.
-
And what does jealousy like?
-
Jealously likes information.
-
Jealously likes details.
-
Jealously likes the vast quantities of shiny hair,
-
the cute little pencil case.
-
Jealously likes photos.
-
That's why Instagram is such a hit. (Laughter)
-
Proust actually links the language of scholarship and jealousy.
-
When Swann is in, like, his jealous throes,
-
and suddenly he's listening at doorways
-
and bribing his mistress's servants,
-
he defends these behaviors.
-
He says, "You know, look, I know you think this is repugnant,
-
but it is no different
-
from interpreting an ancient text
-
or looking at a monument."
-
He says, "They are scientific investigations
-
with real intellectual value."
-
Proust is trying to show us that jealousy
-
feels intolerable and makes us look absurd,
-
but it is, at its crux, a quest for knowledge,
-
a quest for truth, painful truth,
-
and actually, where Proust is concerned,
-
the more painful the truth, the better.
-
Grief, humiliation, loss:
-
these were the avenues to wisdom for Proust.
-
He says, "A woman who we need
-
who makes us suffer elicits from us
-
a gamut of feelings far more profound and vital
-
than a man of genius who interests us."
-
Is he telling us to just go and find cruel women?
-
No. I think he's trying to say
-
that jealousy reveals us to ourselves.
-
And does any other emotion crack us open
-
in this particular way?
-
Does any other emotion reveal to us
-
our aggression and our hideous ambition
-
and our entitlement?
-
Does any other emotion teach us to look
-
with such peculiar intensity?
-
Freud would write about this later.
-
One day, Freud was visited
-
by this very anxious young man who was consumed
-
with the thought of his wife cheating on him.
-
And Freud says, it's something strange about this guy,
-
because he's not looking at what his wife is doing,
-
because she's blameless, everybody knows it.
-
The poor creature is just
-
under suspicion for no cause.
-
But he's looking for things that his wife is doing
-
without noticing, unintentional behaviors.
-
Is she smiling too brightly here,
-
or did she accidentally brush up against a man there?
-
Proust says that the man is becoming
-
the custodian of his wife's unconscious.
-
The novel is very good on this point.
-
The novel is very good at describing how jealousy
-
trains us to look with intensity but not accuracy.
-
In fact, the more intensely jealous we are,
-
the more we become residents of fantasy.
-
And this is why, I think, jealousy doesn't
-
just provoke us to do violent things
-
or illegal things.
-
Jealous prompts us to behave in ways
-
that are wildly inventive.
-
Now I'm thinking of myself at eight, I concede,
-
but I'm also thinking of this story I heard on the news.
-
A 52-year old Michigan woman was caught
-
creating a face Facebook account
-
from which she sent vile, hideous messages
-
to herself for a year.
-
For a year. A year.
-
And she was trying to frame
-
her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend,
-
and I have to confess when I heard this,
-
I just reacted with admiration.
-
(Laughter)
-
Because, I mean, let's be real, like,
-
what immense, if misplaced creativity. Right?
-
This is something from a novel.
-
This is something from a Patricia Highsmith novel.
-
Now Highsmith is a particular favorite of mine.
-
She is the very brilliant and bizarre
-
woman of American letters.
-
She's the author of "Strangers On A Train"
-
and "The Talented Mr. Ripley,"
-
books that are all about how jealousy,
-
it muddles our minds,
-
and once we're in the sphere, in that realm of jealousy,
-
the membrane between what is and what could be
-
can be pierced in an instant.
-
Take Tom Ripley, her most famous character.
-
Now, Tom Ripley goes from wanting you
-
or wanting what you have
-
to being you and having what you once had,
-
and you're under the floorboards,
-
he's answering to your name,
-
he's, you know, wearing your rings,
-
emptying your bank account.
-
That's one way to go.
-
But what do we do? We can't go the Tom Ripley rout.
-
I can't give the world D's,
-
as much as I would really like to some days.
-
And it's a pity, because we live in envious times.
-
We live in jealous times.
-
I mean, we're all good citizens of social media,
-
aren't we, where the currency is envy.
-
Does the novel show us a way out? I'm not sure.
-
So let's do what characters always do when they're not sure,
-
when they are in possession of a mystery.
-
Let's go to 221B Baker Street
-
and ask for Sherlock Holmes.
-
(Laughter)
-
When people think of Holmes,
-
they think of his nemesis being Professor Moriarty,
-
right, this criminal mastermind.
-
But I've always preferred Inspector Lestrade,
-
who is the rat-faced head of Scotland Yard
-
who needs Holmes desperately,
-
needs Holmes's genius, but resents him.
-
Oh, it's so familiar to me.
-
So Lestrade needs his help, resents him,
-
and sort of seethes with bitterness over the course of the mysteries.
-
But as they work together, something starts to change,
-
and finally in "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,"
-
once Holmes comes in, dazzles everybody with his solution,
-
Lestrade turns to Holmes and he says,
-
"We're not jealous of you, Mr. Holmes.
-
We're proud of you."
-
And he says that there's not a man at Scotland Yard
-
who wouldn't want to shake Sherlock Holmes's hand.
-
It's one of the few times we see Holmes moved
-
in the mysteries, and I find it very moving,
-
this little scene, but it's also mysterious, right?
-
It seems to treat jealousy
-
as a problem of geometry, not emotion.
-
You know, one minute Holmes is on the other side from Lestrade.
-
The next minute they're on the same side.
-
Suddenly, Lestrade is letting himself
-
admire this mind that he's resented.
-
Could it be so simple though?
-
What if jealousy really is a matter of geometry,
-
just a matter of where we allow ourselves to stand
-
in relation to another?
-
Well, maybe then we wouldn't have to resent
-
somebody's excellence.
-
We could align ourselves with it.
-
But I like contingency plans.
-
So while we wait for that to happen,
-
let us remember that we have fiction for consolation.
-
Fiction alone demystifies jealousy.
-
Fiction alone domesticates it,
-
invites it to the table.
-
And look who it gathers:
-
sweet Lestrade, terrifying Tom Ripley,
-
crazy Swann, Marcel Proust himself.
-
We are in excellent company.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)
Judith Matz
It's funny, I can "edit" the subtitles and "finalize" them, but nothing happens after clicking on "Submit". Anyway, the book is called "The Sun also Rises" (Hemingway).