Marcel Proust has been part of my life for over a decade now. When I first began reading him, I soon realised that something different was going on. Not only was I connecting with the art, I was connecting with the artist. It felt a bit like entering into a new relationship. This had never happened with any other author. Very quickly, Proust came to seem more like a friend, a confidant, a guide.

Of course, I knew all this was in my head. But that didn’t stop me from feeling its curious veracity. I needed this. I was hurting. I wanted an imaginary friend, someone I could keep inside, silently commune with, speak to in private and personal ways. Proust was like a warm coat in the winter, sunglasses in the summer, a way to feel protected, to filter out all the noise of impolite society, a portal to another world. Both a wall and a doorway.

That sense of protection was enough, but he (and his words) became so much more. One of the best things about reading Proust, is the way he writes things that seem both obvious and revelatory all at once. Often is the time that the pages of Á la recherche du temps perdu reveal a known wisdom to the reader, affirm what she has intuitively sensed, but distil and clarify it. This is Proust’s bread and butter.

At other times, there’s just straight up revelation. A new way of seeing the world. Of experiencing a sensation. Of thinking through a philosophical conundrum.

It’s with all this in mind, that I’ve created ProustGTP. A simple way to ask Marcel a question, to seek advice and inspiration from the master of time, memory and madeleines. Also, to have a bit of fun. Proust loved technology. The airplane, the telephone, the motor car. Proust was all over that stuff. I can only imagine that he would have been deeply intrigued by AI and the strange, strange world it beckons.

I made ProustGPT using OpenAI’s custom GPT builder. Creating a simple persona, tone and response schema for ‘Marcel’, and providing the model with additional ‘training’ by means of the first three full volumes of Á la recherche (Swann’s Way, Within a Budding Grove and The Guermantes Way) which are all in the public domain and available via Project Gutenberg. Enjoy!