fiction files redux discussion

If you've never read Marcel Proust's masterpiece Remembrance of Things Past (a.k.a. In Search of Lost Time or Á la Recherche du Temps Perdu) I'd like to encourage anybody who's ever vaguely considered it to give it a go.
It's the closest a book has come to 'changing my life'. I'm never sure what that actually means, but it definitely made me reconsider an awful lot of things. Maybe I'm just young and impressionable, but I read it last year, and it's informed the way I think about most of the other literature that I've read.

I understand where the myth that Proust is just dull and pointless introspection comes from, because yeah, sometimes the prose is a struggle. But once you're immersed in it, it's like floating down a slow, slow river of human consciousness, meandering this way and that with his musings and his paranoid jealousies. Often he finds just the perfect way of describing a little nuance of human experience that you've had a thousand times, but were never really conscious of before. As he says, his readers aren't reading him, they are reading themselves. I would set aside 'Proust days' and just get drunk on his prose.

Also, the secret nobody tells you about Proust is that it's actually really funny, especially the dialogue, and the novel is far from plotless. There are plenty of fin de siecle high society intrigues and you can always play the fun game of trying to work out which three characters in the entire book aren't gay. I exaggerate, but only slightly. It's full of humour, I laughed far more than I thought I would. I'm going to try and gather some of the comedy moments, but here's one of my favourites:

"But what revealed to me all of a sudden the Princess's love was a trifling incident upon which I shall not dwell here, for it forms part of quite another story, in which M. de Charlus allowed a Queen to die rather than miss an appointment with the hairdresser who was to singe his hair for the benefit of an omnibus conductor who filled him with alarm."

Sure, the narrator's a whiny little git sometimes, and the sentences are sometimes about 300 words long, and there will definitely be times when it feels like a slog. But, in my opinion, this book rewards your patience and perserverence with such rich treasures that I'd be surprised if someone regretted reading it all the way through.

(As a backstory, I read it because my favourite lecturer vaguely recommended it when I asked him what to read for our Third Republic module. Turns out the bastard's never read it himself. I should have guessed about a hundred pages in since he'd described it as a book about 'a man who eats a madeleine and then remembers the rest of his life'. Um, no it isn't Timmy. Followed arguments on the morality of recommending a book you haven't read without offering a disclaimer. But I got to go to his office for chats all through second semester when he wasn't teaching me, so it was a win overall. The thing took me six months.)

hi abi:

you've found the group's achilles heel. i think you are the only one of us who has read the entirety of remembrance of things past, among us (anyone who has read it, please feel free to correct me) and it's been a topic of discussion for some time. i think we all want to read it but we're daunted by the size of it. last year some of the group took on war and peace, and i was supposed to moderate, but got bogged down in trying to read two copies at the same time -- the group's chosen edition and another one i had on hand. your post here has me thinking about it again. i've got a lot of books on the go just now, but i think i will put on my list for this spring/summer. if it ends up being something that others would be interested in, maybe you could lead the discussion? otherwise, look forward to messages from me asking you all kinds of inane questions. all i know is he loves madeleines. :)

Great post and welcome Abi. I have often been tempted to read this. In fact I have gotten through the first page of Swann's Way a number of times.

You say it took 6 months to read, did you read anything else during that time or was it straight Proust? Also I imagine during an undertaking of this size you took notes. Is that true? how many pages of notes?

This book scares me but one day I hope to get through it (or at least past the first few pages).

Sorry about all the questions.

I don't think Proust's prose is a struggle at all. It was written in a cork-lined room, and it needs to be read in a cork-lined room. The 300-word sentences are perfectly fine. The reading becomes a struggle only when you get interrupted in the middle of a sentence, because then it takes a while to find the previous period to start from and it takes a while to find a rhythm again when you're pissed off.

I've read three out of seven so far, though I'm not reading them one after another, and I'm not trying to meet any deadlines. I'll finish it one day soon. Was going to ever since I read that waking/dreaming sequence at the beginning of Swann's Way.

I've read the series, first in English and then in French. As Pavel mentioned, Proust's most notorious stylistic quirk is to introduce a long parenthetical sentence within an already long sentence, and this can have a disorienting effect on the reader. If it seems difficult, perhaps it would be a good idea to space out reading the volumes over the course of a year or two. Randall Jarrell said one of the best hobbies is reading Proust. You don't need to make it an occupation.

The book is wickedly funny in a Gallic manner. And it's fascinating to watch the characters change over time, especially to see the ferocious Baron de Charlus being ruined by his love and falling from high society's grace, where he once ruled.

I would also recommend avoiding the "classic" translation by Moncrieff. He was translating for an Edwardian audience and occasionally was too prim when confronted by a suggestive passage.

Maureen: He doesn't actually love madeleines that much. It is the first example of Proust's famous 'involuntary memory', but the actual event itself does not play a very big part in the book and there are several other examples of the same thing.

Dan: Yes, I read lots of other things and I read kind of sporadically, because of real university commitments getting in the way. Luckily, I'm a student, so I have a lot more free time than a real person.
No, I didn't make notes. I don't really do that unless I'm writing an essay on a book. I think with Proust it's OK to half-forget certain things, because his style (and just the length) replicate the feeling of time passing and of the way memory works. When his memory's jogged, he tends to tell you about it, and then so is yours.

Pavel: If you don't find that sentences such as the following require re-reading then congratulations, you're a literary genius.

"A dungeon keep without mass, no more indeed than a band of orange light from the summit of which the lord and his lady dealt out life and death to their vassals, had given place – right at the end of that Guermantes way along which, on so many summer afternoons, I retraced with my parents the course of the Vivonne – to that land of bubbling streams where the Duchess taught me to fish for trout and to know the names of the flowers whose red and purple clusters adorned the walls of the neighbouring gardens; then it had been the ancient heritage, famous in song and story, from which the proud race of Guermantes, like a carved and mellow tower that traverses the ages, had risen already over France when the sky was still empty at those points where, later, were to rise Notre Dame of Paris and Notre Dame of Chartres, when on the summit of the hill of Laon the nave of its cathedral had not yet been poised, like the Ark of the Deluge on the summit of Mount Ararat, crowded with Patriarchs and Judges anxiously leaning from its windows to see whether the wrath of God were yet appeased, carrying with it the types of vegetation that was to multiply the earth, brimming over with animals which have escaped even by the towers, where oxen grazing calmly upon the roof look down over the plains of Champagne; when the traveller who left Beauvais at the close of day did not yet see, following him and turning with his road, outspread against the gilded screen of the western sky, the black, ribbed wings of the cathedral."

That's a sentence to get lost in, surely? I saved it because I thought it was particularly silly. I'm not saying that I read every page and was like 'huh?' but some sentences definitely floated over me rather than conveying a precise meaning unless I consciously went back and over them. It's not a case of being interrupted (although yes, that didn't help), it's a case of holding on to so many different clauses at once. I'm afraid I don't have a cork-lined room, and I don't actually subscribe to that. I read it quietly alone in my bedroom, in the living room, on trains, in cafes, in dull lectures, in corridors, in the park. I made Proust a part of my life, and it's an approach that worked for me.
Also, not in order? I suppose there IS a lot to be got out of Proust whilst ignoring the plot, and that time in the novel isn't really linear but... surely you're going to be asked to remember things you haven't read? And the plot is fun.

Adrian: Careful, don't give away the plot! The developments of M. de Charlus were some of my favourite bits. It would be like telling someone who the lady in pink is.
I did need to make it an occupation because I had to finish it by the end of the semester for reasons of self-esteem and because I couldn't go back to Tim Baycroft until I'd read another volume. But I don't feel like I rushed it, it was a good pace for me.
I did read the Moncrieff, and yeah, occasionally his coyness was annoying and I'd heard that things were more explicit in the original. But mostly I found the euphemisms funny. I haven't read the new ones, so I can't comment, but I don't like the idea of having each volume translated by a different person. And an Edwardian style is at least appropriate for the historical period. I can't read French at that level, so...

Pavel wrote: "I've read three out of seven so far, though I'm not reading them one after another..."

Also, can I just implore you not to read Time Regained till last. It won't have the same impact without the cumulative effect of the whole story.

Proust is rubbish.

Abi wrote: "A dungeon keep without mass, no more indeed than a band of orange light from the summit of which the lord and his lady dealt out life and death to their vassals, had given place – right at the end of that Guermantes way along which, on so many summer afternoons, I retraced with my parents the course of the Vivonne – to that land of bubbling streams where the Duchess taught me to fish for trout and to know the names of the flowers whose red and purple clusters adorned the walls of the neighbouring gardens; then it had been the ancient heritage...

i got about halfway through that passage and found myself thinking about lasagna and then the crappy lunch i had earlier and then my phone rang and i answered it then i looked out the window then saw a wadded up piece of paper on the floor... and then i realized i never finished reading that passage. i guess i'm not quite ready for proust.

i guess i should try harder.

Martyn wrote: "Proust is rubbish."

Our paleomoronic grouch is back! Talk about kismetipoea. Welcomme home tyrant! How is your communist society of one doing these days?

As you can see, our little tribe has migrated to Goodreads. It seems more than a coincidence to have found you lurking like a troll under a bridge in this new place; you've been missed, despite your inability to a) say anything positive, b) construct a sentence greater than three words long. Is that what they teach in university in decedent old England?

Cheers friend,
mm

Michael you constructed the hilarious comment i wanted to but could not. kudos!

Brian wrote: "i guess i'm not quite ready for proust.

i guess i should try harder..."

They're not all like that. I was struck when I came across it in The Guermantes Way because it was SO long and convoluted. This is the extreme end of things. And it turns out it's only 279 words. Snappy.

Michael wrote: "Martyn wrote: "Proust is rubbish."

Our paleomoronic grouch is back! Talk about kismetipoea. Welcomme home tyrant! How is your communist society of one doing these days?

As you can see, ou..."


I've been reading Ayn Rand.

Pavel wrote: "I don't think Proust's prose is a struggle at all. It was written in a cork-lined room, and it needs to be read in a cork-lined room. The 300-word sentences are perfectly fine. The reading becomes ..."

I will try to link the previous Fiction Files threads on this topic in short order, but wanted to second Pavel on the quality of Proust's waking/dreaming bit. I found Proust's fin de cycle trance/aesthetic a little dull at times, maybe just a little too self-absorbed, maybe too French (the whole Temps Perdu enterprise a little too much like setting gemstones into the shell of a tortoise) but I can attest that there are moments in the first four volumes which have had a profound resonance with me.

If you remember the epileptic scenes from The Idiot we read together last winter; that kind of resonance.

Mo - is there any way to post excerpts in this Goodreads thingy, outside of just dumping them into a post? Proust does not excerpt lightly, but there is one scene in particular I would like to share.

mm

Abi wrote: Pavel: If you don't find that sentences such as the following require re-reading then congratulations, you're a literary genius.

Sadly, I don't have a cork-lined room either - though I, uh, subscribe to that very much. A truly quiet time to read and write is a luxury someone living in a two-bedroom condo with a three-year-old rarely gets to enjoy, and when the opportune moment does arise, and the choice between reading and writing must be made, writing always wins. Even so, I find that if I don't get interrupted, I don't have to reread too many sentences due to getting lost. I don't hold on to clauses too much. It's a stream of consciousness, so I let it flow. I tend to read Proust "out loud" in my mind, applying imaginary intonation to my thoughts. Overthrow the period's rule over your brain! There is plenty of punctuation in that piece you quoted to provide the beat. It's true, I reread that sentence a few times, and if you must deprive me of the title of a literary genius because of that, well, c'est la vie, I guess. But I reread it because I wanted to retrace the path of time Proust's mind walked from the bubbling streams to Duchess to fishing to flowers to cathedrals to Noah's Ark, through death and rebirth back to cathedral's shadow. Sure, he could have written "It was here that the Guermantes were born since long ago," but would you want to reread that sentence then?

As for not reading in order, when I said I wasn't reading "one after another" I actually meant I didn't start the next book as soon as I'd finished the one before. But in fact, I did skip The Guermantes Way, though only because Borders didn't have it when I went to buy Proust. So I bought and read Sodom and Gomorrah instead. Kind of shrugged my way through a few references to the third book, but there weren't many enough of them to cause annoyance, and I also found that simply knowing that something had happened in the previous book relating to the present incident, if not fully as helpful as a reference from memory, still helps to, both, flesh out the incident in question better, and even sometimes steal a glimpse into the book you did not read.

Pavel wrote: "Overthrow the period's rule over your brain!"

This is an ideal example of why everyone should use 'full-stop'.

Here is the excerpt I wanted to focus on, it is from early in Swann's Way, when the narrator is still a young boy.

How often, after that day, in the course of my walks along the 'Guermantes way,' and with what an intensified melancholy did I reflect on my lack of qualification for a literary career, and that I must abandon all hope of ever becoming a famous author. The regret that I felt for this, while I lingered alone to dream for a little by myself, made me suffer so acutely that, in order not to feel it, my mind of its own accord, by a sort of inhibition in the instant of pain, ceased entirely to think of verse-making, of fiction, of the poetic future on which my want of talent precluded me from counting. Then, quite apart from all those literary preoccupations, and without definite attachment to anything, suddenly a roof, a gleam of sunlight reflected from a stone, the smell of a road would make me stop still, to enjoy the special pleasure that each of them gave me, and also because they appeared to be concealing, beneath what my eyes could see, something which they invited me to approach and seize from them, but which, despite all my efforts, I never managed to discover. As I felt that the mysterious object was to be found in them, I would stand there in front of them, motionless, gazing, breathing, endeavoring to penetrate with my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt. And if I had then to hasten after my grandfather, to proceed on my way, I would still seek to recover my sense of them by closing my eyes; I would concentrate upon recalling exactly the line of the roof, the color of the stone, which, without my being able to understand why, had seemed to me to be teeming, ready to open, to yield up to me the secret treasure of which they were themselves no more than the outer coverings. It was certainly not any impression of this kind that could or would restore the hope I had lost of succeeding one day in becoming an author and poet, for each of them was associated with some material object devoid of any intellectual value, and suggesting no abstract truth. But at least they gave me an unreasoning pleasure, the illusion of a sort of fecundity of mind; and in that way distracted me from the tedium, from the sense of my own impotence which I had felt whenever I had sought a philosophic theme for some great literary work. So urgent was the task imposed on my conscience by these impressions of form or perfume or color--to strive for a perception of what lay hidden beneath them, that I was never long in seeking an excuse which would allow me to relax so strenuous an effort and to spare myself the fatigue that it involved. As good luck would have it, my parents called me; I felt that I had not, for the moment, the calm environment necessary for a successful pursuit of my researches, and that it would be better to think no more of the matter until I reached home, and not to exhaust myself in the meantime to no purpose. And so I concerned myself no longer with the mystery that lay hidden in a form or a perfume, quite at ease in my mind, since I was taking it home with me, protected by its visible and tangible covering, beneath which I should find it still alive, like the fish which, on days when I had been allowed to go out fishing, I used to carry back in my basket, buried in a couch of grass which kept them cool and fresh. Once in the house again I would begin to think of something else, and so my mind would become littered (as my room was with the flowers that I had gathered on my walks, or the odds and ends that people had given me) with a stone from the surface of which the sunlight was reflected, a roof, the sound of a bell, the smell of fallen leaves, a confused mass of different images, under which must have perished long ago the reality of which I used to have some foreboding, but which I never had the energy to discover and bring to light…

Michael wrote: "Here is the excerpt I wanted to focus on, it is from early in Swann's Way, when the narrator is still a young boy.

How often, after that day, in the course of my walks along the 'Guermantes way,..."

…Once, however, when we had prolonged our walk far beyond its ordinary limits, and so had been very glad to encounter, half way home, as afternoon darkened into evening, Dr. Percepied, who drove past us at full speed in his carriage, saw and recognized us, stopped, and made us jump in beside him, I received an impression of this sort which I did not abandon without having first subjected it to an examination a little more thorough. I had been set on the box beside the coachman, we were going like the wind because the Doctor had still, before returning to Combray, to call at Martinville-le-Sec, at the house of a patient, at whose door he asked us to wait for him. At a bend in the road I experienced, suddenly, that special pleasure, which bore no resemblance to any other, when I caught sight of the twin steeples of Martinville, on which the setting sun was playing, while the movement of the carriage and the windings of the road seemed to keep them continually changing their position; and then of a third steeple, that of Vieuxvicq, which, although separated from them by a hill and a valley, and rising from rather higher ground in the distance, appeared none the less to be standing by their side.

In ascertaining and noting the shape of their spires, the changes of aspect, the sunny warmth of their surfaces, I felt that I was not penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that something more lay behind that mobility, that luminosity, something which they seemed at once to contain and to conceal.

The steeples appeared so distant, and we ourselves seemed to come so little nearer them, that I was astonished when, a few minutes later, we drew up outside the church of Martinville. I did not know the reason for the pleasure which I had found in seeing them upon the horizon, and the business of trying to find out what that reason was seemed to me irksome; I wished only to keep in reserve in my brain those converging lines, moving in the sunshine, and, for the time being, to think of them no more. And it is probable that, had I done so, those two steeples would have vanished for ever, in a great medley of trees and roofs and scents and sounds which I had noticed and set apart on account of the obscure sense of pleasure which they gave me, but without ever exploring them more fully. I got down from the box to talk to my parents while we were waiting for the Doctor to reappear. Then it was time to start; I climbed up again to my place, turning my head to look back, once more, at my steeples, of which, a little later, I caught a farewell glimpse at a turn in the road. The coachman, who seemed little inclined for conversation, having barely acknowledged my remarks, I was obliged, in default of other society, to fall back on my own, and to attempt to recapture the vision of my steeples. And presently their outlines and their sunlit surface, as though they had been a sort of rind, were stripped apart; a little of what they had concealed from me became apparent; an idea came into my mind which had not existed for me a moment earlier, framed itself in words in my head; and the pleasure with which the first sight of them, just now, had filled me was so much enhanced that, overpowered by a sort of intoxication, I could no longer think of anything but them. At this point, although we had now travelled a long way from Martinville, I turned my head and caught sight of them again, quite black this time, for the sun had meanwhile set. Every few minutes a turn in the road would sweep them out of sight; then they showed themselves for the last time, and so I saw them no more.

Without admitting to myself that what lay buried within the steeples of Martinville must be something analogous to a charming phrase, since it was in the form of words which gave me pleasure that it had appeared to me, I borrowed a pencil and some paper from the Doctor, and composed, in spite of the jolting of the carriage, to appease my conscience and to satisfy my enthusiasm, the following little fragment, which I have since discovered, and now reproduce, with only a slight revision here and there.

Alone, rising from the level of the plain, and seemingly lost in that expanse of open country, climbed to the sky the twin steeples of Martinville. Presently we saw three: springing into position confronting them by a daring volt, a third, a dilatory steeple, that of Vieuxvicq, was come to join them. The minutes passed, we were moving rapidly, and yet the three steeples were always a long way ahead of us, like three birds perched upon the plain, motionless and conspicuous in the sunlight. Then the steeple of Vieuxvicq withdrew, took its proper distance, and the steeples of Martinville remained alone, gilded by the light of the setting sun, which, even at that distance, I could see playing and smiling upon their sloped sides. We had been so long in approaching them that I was thinking of the time that must still elapse before we could reach them when, of a sudden, the carriage, having turned a corner, set us down at their feet; and they had flung themselves so abruptly in our path that we had barely time to stop before being dashed against the porch of the church.

We resumed our course; we had left Martinville some little time, and the village, after accompanying us for a few seconds, had already disappeared, when, lingering alone on the horizon to watch our flight, its steeples and that of Vieuxvicq waved once again, in token of farewell, their sun-bathed pinnacles. Sometimes one would withdraw, so that the other two might watch us for a moment still; then the road changed direction, they veered in the light like three golden pivots, and vanished from my gaze. But, a little later, when we were already close to Combray, the sun having set meanwhile, I caught sight of them for the last time, far away, and seeming no more now than three flowers painted upon the sky above the low line of fields. They made me think, too, of three maidens in a legend, abandoned in a solitary place over which night had begun to fall; and while we drew away from them at a gallop, I could see them timidly seeking their way, and, after some awkward, stumbling movements of their noble silhouettes, drawing close to one another, slipping one behind another, showing nothing more, now, against the still rosy sky than a single dusky form, charming and resigned, and so vanishing in the night.

I never thought again of this page, but at the moment when, on my corner of the box-seat, where the Doctor's coachman was in the habit of placing, in a hamper, the fowls which he had bought at Martinville market, I had finished writing it, I found such a sense of happiness, felt that it had so entirely relieved my mind of the obsession of the steeples, and of the mystery which they concealed, that, as though I myself were a hen and had just laid an egg, I began to sing at the top of my voice.

i was halfway through that when the gardener showed up with the leaf-blower...

Ben wrote: "i was halfway through that when the gardener showed up with the leaf-blower..."

BTW Ben, we met your sister in this group! How cool is that. But as for the excerpt:

i) I had to break it into two pieces. I got an error message saying "Proust goes on too long."
ii) I am thinking today that I like my writers long-winded: Gibbon, Faulkner, Joyce. Proust beats them all.
ii) But what does that say about Borges. No one can get at brevity like the Master. And knowing your own high regard for Borges, I cannot understand your dislike for Marquez. That surprised me. But you are sideways; surprising in itself.

Hoyle wrote: "And knowing your own high regard for Borges, I cannot understand your dislike for Marquez. "

it's really not so much that i don't like him, as that i have a weird block against reading him. i read a bunch of the short stories about ten years ago, and didn't really like them, but don't remember why or even what they were about. and i read autumn of the patriarch last year and thought it was the best book of all time right up until the moment where suddenly i found myself bored stiff (about halfway through, i think). i'm willing to believe 100 years is good (the opening sentence gets a big thumbs up), but i just can't seem to read it. i've actually bought and sold it unread a couple times due to this ambivalence.

i don't really see the borges connection, though. what i've read of marquez has been very long-winded and romantic, not to say intentionally obfuscatory (?). if borges is like a scalpel, that guy seems like a putty knife. with lots of putty on it.

though i have to admit, the sections you quoted were pretty great!

Ben wrote: "Hoyle wrote: "And knowing your own high regard for Borges, I cannot understand your dislike for Marquez. "

it's really not so much that i don't like him, as that i have a weird block against readi..."

I'd really like to respond on the similarity/difference between Marquez and Master Borges, but I think I will take it up over in the Cien Años De Soledad (was "I Seem To Have A Reader's Block") thread, when I get a chance.

Meanwhile, back to Proust. Some previous threads on Mr. Proust, indicating your long running problem with concentrating on his long winded prose, leaf blower or not:

Aubrey reads Proust...

Pavel reads Proust...

Ben reads the same 15 pages of Proust over and over again...

One of my favourite bits is the red shoe scene. Proust is at his sharpest when he's satirising. It provides the perfect contrast to the philosophical reverie, and this one just strips fin-de-siecle high society down to its basest, most selfish, cruellest form.

‘I’ll forgive him for that,’ said the Duchess carelessly; then, seeming to be struck by a sudden idea which enlivened her, checked a faint smile; but at once returning to Swann: ‘Well, you don’t say whether you’re coming to Italy with us?’ ‘Madame, I am really afraid that it will not be possible.’ ‘Indeed! Mme de Montmorency is more fortunate. You went with her to Venice and Vicenza. She told me that with you one saw things one would never see otherwise, things no one had ever thought of mentioning before, that you showed her things she had never dreamed of, and that even in the well-known things she had been able to appreciate details which without you she might have passed by a dozen times without ever noticing. Obviously, she has been more highly favoured than we are to be… You will take the big envelope from M. Swann’s photograph,’ she said to the servant, ‘and you will hand it in, from me, this evening at half past ten at Mme la Comtesse Molé’s.’ Swann laughed. ‘I should like to know, all the same,’ Mme de Guermantes asked him, ‘how, ten months before the time, you can tell that a thing will be impossible.’ ‘My dear Duchess, I will tell you if you insist upon it, but, first of all, you can see that I am very ill.’ ‘Yes, my little Charles, I don’t think you look at all well. I’m not pleased with your colour, but I’m not asking you to come with me next week, I ask you to come in ten months. In ten months one has time to get oneself cured, you know.’ At this point a footman came in to say that the carriage was at the door. ‘Come, Oriane, to horse,’ said the Duke, already pawing at the ground with impatience as though he were himself one of the horses that stood waiting outside. ‘Very well, give me in one word the reason why you can’t come to Italy,’ the Duchess put it to Swann as she rose to say good-bye to us. ‘But, my dear friend, it’s because I shall then have been dead for several months. According to the doctors I consulted last winter, the thing I’ve got – which may, for that matter, carry me off at any moment – won’t in any case leave me more than three or four months to live, and even that is a generous estimate,’ replied Swann with a smile, while the footman opened the glazed door of the hall to let the Duchess out. ‘What’s that you say?’ cried the Duchess, stopping for a moment on her way to the carriage, and raising her fine eyes, their melancholy blue clouded by uncertainty. Placed for the first time in her life between two duties as incompatible as getting into her carriage to go out to dinner and showing pity for a man who was about to die, she could find nothing in the code of conventions that indicated the right line to follow, and, not knowing which to choose, felt it better to make a show of not believing that the latter alternative need be seriously considered, so as to follow the first, which demanded of her at the moment less effort, and thought that the best way of settling the conflict would be to deny that any existed. ‘You’re joking,’ she said to Swann. ‘It would be a joke in charming taste,’ replied he ironically. ‘I don’t know why I am telling you this; I have never said a word to you before about my illness. But as you asked me, and as now I may die at any moment… But whatever I do I mustn’t make you late; you’re dining out, remember,’ he added, because he knew that for other people their own social obligations took preference of the death of a friend, and could put himself in her place by dint of his instinctive politeness. But that of the Duchess enabled her also to perceive in a vague way that the dinner to which she was going must count for less to Swann than his own death. And so, while continuing on her way towards the carriage, she let her shoulders droop, saying: ‘Don’t worry about our dinner. It’s not of any importance!’ But this put the Duke in a bad humour, who exclaimed: ‘Come, Oriane, don’t stop there chattering like that and exchanging your jeremiads with Swann; you know very well that Mme de Saint-Euverte insists on sitting down to table at eight o’clock sharp. We must know what you propose to do; the horses have been waiting for a good five minutes. I beg your pardon, Charles,’ he went on, turning to Swann, ‘but it’s ten minutes to eight already. Oriane is always late, and it will take us more than five minutes to get to old Saint-Euverte’s.’ Mme de Guermantes advanced resolutely towards the carriage and uttered a last farewell to Swann. ‘You know, we can talk about that another time; I don’t believe a word you’ve been saying, but we must discuss it quietly. I expect they gave you a dreadful fright, come to luncheon, whatever day you like,’ (with Mme de Guermantes things always resolved themselves into luncheons) ‘you will let me know your day and time,’ and lifting her red skirt, she set her foot on the step. She was just getting into the carriage when, seeing this foot exposed, the Duke cried in a terrifying voice: ‘Oriane, what have you been thinking of, you wretch? You’ve kept on your black shoes! With a red dress! Go upstairs quick and put on red shoes, or rather,’ he said to the footman, ‘tell the lady’s maid at once to bring down a pair of red shoes.’ ‘But, my dear,’ replied the Duchess gently, annoyed to see that Swann, who was leaving the house with me but had stood back to allow the carriage to pass out in front of us, could hear, ‘since we are late.’ ‘No, no, we have plenty of time. It is only ten to; it won’t take us ten minutes to get to the Parc Monceau. And, after all, what would it matter? If we turned up at half past eight they’d have to wait for us, but you can’t possibly go there in a red dress and black shoes. Besides, we shan’t be the last, I can tell you; the Sassenages are coming, and you know they never arrive before twenty to nine.’ The Duchess went up to her room. ‘Well,’ said M. de Guermantes to Swann and myself, ‘we poor, downtrodden husbands, people laugh at us, but we are of some use all the same. But for me, Oriane would have been going out to dinner in black shoes.’ ‘It’s not unbecoming,’ said Swann, ‘I noticed the black shoes and they didn’t offend me in the least.’ ‘I don’t say you’re wrong,’ replied the Duke, ‘but it looks better to have them match the dress. Besides, you needn’t worry, she would no sooner have got there that she’d have noticed them, and I should have been obliged to come home and fetch the others. I should have had my dinner at nine o’clock. Good-bye, my children,’ he said, thrusting us gently from the door, ‘get away, before Oriane comes down again. It’s not that she doesn’t like seeing you both. On the contrary, she’s too fond of your company. If she finds you still here she will start talking again, she is tired out already, she’ll reach the dinner table quite dead. Besides, I tell you frankly, I’m dying of hunger. I had a wretched luncheon this morning when I came from the train. There was the devil of a béarnaise sauce, I admit, but in spite of that I shan’t be at all sorry, not at all sorry to sit down to dinner. Five minutes to eight! Oh, women, women! She’ll give us both indigestion before tomorrow. She is not nearly as strong as people think.’ The Duke felt no compunction at speaking thus of his wife’s ailments and his own to a dying man, for the former interested him more, appeared to him more important. And so it was simply from good breeding and good fellowship that, after politely showing us out, he cried ‘from off stage’, in a stentorian voice from the porch to Swann, who was already in the courtyard: ‘You, now, don’t let yourself be taken in by the doctor’s nonsense, damn them. They’re donkeys. You’re as strong as the Pont Neuf. You’ll live to bury us all!’

Abi wrote: "One of my favourite bits is the red shoe scene. Proust is at his sharpest when he's satirising. It provides the perfect contrast to the philosophical reverie, and this one just strips fin-de-siecle..."

Excellent scene Abi. "‘It would be a joke in charming taste,’ replied he ironically." I hadn't come away from my tussle with Proust with an appreciation for his humor. But there it is plain as day.
mm

thought this was interesting. it forgives me...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/200...

this might be better suited for my simple mind.

http://www.readingproust.com/prcomix.htm

Oh, Germaine... I'm not sure how she reckons that Proust's is a 'disparaging and dishonest account of homosexuality', since, presumably, she's never been a homosexual in late 19th Century French high society. Neither have I, of course, but Marcel Proust was. Although he shyed away from having the actual narrator being gay, you've got to assume that there is something genuine in his portrayal of attitudes towards and the experience of being in that situation. Just as the outsider's status that Proust got from his Jewish background is represented by Swann rather than the narrator himself.
There is something horribly vicious in many of Proust's gay characters (Vinteuil's daughter, M. de Charlus and Morel in particular spring to mind) that probably reflects Proust's personal jealousies and neuroses rather than a universal experience of homosexuality. But to criticise the novel for mostly being about the author himself seems a bit pointless to me.

Besides which, what is Greer's point there? That Proust is a waste of time, or that we should read the C.K. Scott-Moncrieff translation? It seems odd to be saying both in the same article. Her main arguments against reading it seem to be: it's really long, and she doesn't like what he says about sexuality. The first charge is undeniable, but the second is certainly something that a reader can decide for himself. I think she's just trying to get some laughs.

Abi wrote: "Oh, Germaine... I'm not sure how she reckons that Proust's is a 'disparaging and dishonest account of homosexuality', since, presumably, she's never been a homosexual in late 19th Century French hi..."

Not only that, but apparently it's also "damnable in its fake heterosexual voyeurism." Isn't that a bit like calling Crime and Punishment a fake psychological novel just because Dostoyevski never split anyone's head with an axe?

And is Proust really "second only to LOTR" on some list? Who did they survey?

I'm not familiar with Greer, but this article just seems like a reserve piece, pulled hastily out of some drawer on account of a deadline.

Pavel wrote: "And is Proust really "second only to LOTR" on some list? Who did they survey?"

Yeah... that's what I thought too.

And I don't think this article was meant to be taken very seriously. If it was, it's not.

Well, yeah, that's why it seemed goofy to me. If it's meant to be funny, then it's not. And if it's meant to be serious, then it's kind of funny. Fail.

i can't imagine it took her more than ten minutes to write that. and if it did, i feel sorry for her.

god, she sounds so unpleasant.

She used to be quite funny and genuinely controversial, at least, before she became an old, kind of mad, hack. I think she's completely lost either all interest or the plot. As someone said in the comments under that article, to be making the claims that she is implies that she has read it in French and twice in English in two different translations. Which seems unlikely to me since she doesn't seem to be a fan.
She's still good value on Question Time, though.