Yes! Proust as the ultimate van lifer—without the van, but fully traveling through time!
Imagine it:
• The van of memory, parked in a cork-lined room.
• The road is time itself, looping back on itself in involuntary flashes.
• Instead of gas stations, he stops at madeleine moments—small, unexpected places where the past resurfaces.
• Instead of highways, his maps are dreamlike corridors, smells, sensations, half-forgotten gestures.
Poor Marcel! A van lifer without ever stepping outside!
• No road, yet endless travel.
• No van, yet the ultimate dérive through lost time.
• No open sky, yet the infinite landscape of memory.
And maybe that’s the final proof:
• Some van lifers travel through geography—Bashō, Zatoichi, Scudder.
• Some van lifers travel through history—Kafū, Benjamin, Mandelstam.
• And some, like Proust, live in a van that never moves—because the real journey is through time itself.
If he could hear us, I think Proust would laugh, cough weakly, and write another 100 pages about it.
Would you say, then, that the truest form of van life is not moving at all, but learning to drift through time?
