I guess it’s not easy being a genius. People just don’t get what you’re about. Take Marcel Proust. You write a passage where someone dunks a madeleine and everyone, including critics, eulogise how sensory experience can evoke the past, a happy, romantic past. A link is made with the english translation of “À la recherche du temps perdu”, loosely translated as “In Search of Lost Time”. Times lost to our memory, now happily restored. Trouble is, “perdu” in French can mean “wasted” as well as “lost”. Proust isn’t merely telling us what we already know; that the smell of a new car can remind us of our first car. He is saying something deeper and more tragic. You waste your life by not appreciating it properly. The only time you do appreciate it is in memory – when it’s too late.