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I start off 2020 with a new volume, a new book, in Proust's A Remembrance of Things Past. This is the 3rd book, Guermantes Way.

One of those unexpected reading connections happened with the very first book I chose to read in 2020: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. The middle chapter is titled 'In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower' and it referenced Proust throughout! I was struck by how many of Alison Bechdel's thoughts and reflections about Proust, especially the first 2 books comprising Vol. 1, reflected my own, from the way the English translation negates the hint of prurience and sexuality of the original French to the obsession of Proust with flowers like lilacs and hawthorns. And, like Proust is examining memory, so too is Bechdel after her father's death and learning his secret life.

Plus as so much of Fun Home is about the author coming to terms with what she calls her erotic truth and her father's, the use of Proust in telling her story is perfection.

Even though I'm not quite finished with the first half of Guermantes Way (about 357 pages), I wanted to take a few minutes to post about how much easier I am finding the reading so far! In fact, I think this is my favorite book so far. Probably because there are far more conversations and events at the center, and far fewer long expositions rhapsodizing over a sunset or the color pink or hawthorns, or ruminating over what makes an artist or memory. My reading flows more smoothly.

Or maybe I'm finally settling into the magic of Proust.

Haven't updated here in a while. I've finished Guermantes Way. The second half was a struggle to read for some reason, did not grip or enchant the way the first half did. Now into Sodom & Gomorrah (in my edition it has the overly tame title of Cities of the Plain which is not the original. At all.) and let's say that the section about narrator spying on Mr. de Charlus and Jupien woke me up! Amusing to read, especially with all the parallels and allusions to orchids waiting to be polinated by a bee, but also a moment of awakening to knowledge for the narrator.

Of course as a reader I've long realized that M. de Charlus 'swings the other way', but I'm wondering how much of that I would have picked up if I had read this volume when I was 20 and first reading Combray. I doubt I would have picked up on the many clues because like the narrator, my experience and knowledge was limited. That was the mid-70's, when open homosexuality was still not common. At my current advanced age, it is all so obvious. but then, I would probably have been shocked (rather than just titillated) by the sudden disclosure of M. de Charlus' predilections.

It is a hilariouis scene too.

The narrator is such a spoiled inconsiderate rich kid! I really want to slap him!

Just had to get that out there.

Nearing the end of Vol. II - end of Sodom & Gomorrah. Really enjoying this section which is at this moment visiting the Verdurins who have rented the Cambremer mansion near Balbec. Albertine features prominently for the first time, though we still really don't know much about her. Just what the narrator sees/thinks. And talk about unreliable narrators! My own theory on Albertine is that she's doing what any young woman of that era with few prospects: finding a wealthy young man to marry her and provide security and social standing. It's expected, and perhaps her salvation. We'll see.

Coronavirus has sidelined the discussion group from meeting this month. I'm reading more slowly as a result. My client Lili Anolik has read it. After commiserating about the times it's a slog, it's slow reading, etc. She mentioned how the last volume has bursts like fireworks going off as you read.

I almost can't wait.

You'd think I'd be reading anything but Proust now that the discussion group has been postponed. Nope.

I'm finding reading Proust strangely comforting during this time of pandemic.

Email from discussion leader today. Looks like we will switch to Zoom!

Well, I have been quite delinquent in posting, haven't I?

The zoom meeting of the discussion group went very well and is likely to be how we finish the year (through June). Interesting, and not surprising, everyone had trouble reading, including the discussion leader who loves Proust and has read it multiple times. Few actually finished the reading - I certainly had not. We have a make up session this week simply to bring us to the end of Vol. II.

And that's where I am. I finished Sodom & Gomorrah a couple days ago. My oh my was there plenty of action! We have the scenes with the aging Baron de Charlus and his relationship with Morel, the violinist, army man, and son of the narrator's father's valet. Only that must be kept secret. Morel himself seems to be bisexual with fantasies of deflowering virgins in a rather vicious disgusting way, with the assistance of the motor car chauffeur working for the Verdurins (although initially on hire by narrator).

And sexuality, sexual relationships are much of the heart of this book -- given the title of course they are. Most of the focus is on homosexual relationships but also of the rather unhealthy love affairs witnessed by narrator -- Swann with Odette, Saint Loup with his Rachel. Even of the Duc de Guermantes and his Duchesse where he openly keeps mistresses.

Which brings us to Albertine. We first met in her Volume I on the narrator's trip to Balbec with his Grandmother. Albertine is back in the narrator's life and the object of his obsession, his 'love', and his dalliance. They have spent time together in Paris, and now in Balbec for the summer, they spend even more time together. The narrator buys her clothing, tells her how to dress, watches her closely, has her come over for booty calls on a whim, all to the dismay of his mother who believes it is time for him to marry but not to Albertine.

Yet for all this, we do not really have a sense of who or what Albertine is. She is one of the few characters we don't. And one of the questions: Is she a lesbian or not? Does she dally with other women? That question obsesses the narrator and in part contributes to his jealousy.

There are hints and clues all leading to conclude that yes she is attracted to women. But understanding why she allows the narrator to treat her as he does is harder to determine. As a reader, I assumed it was because she needed to make a good marriage given she has come from nothing, is an orphan, and while having a moderately good lineage, has no money and needs to find security. But that rug is ruthlessly and suddenly pulled out from under the reader at the very end of Sodom & Gomorrah. So who knows?

I find it interesting how little we know Albertine because so many of the other characters are portrayed fully. I would know them in a crowd, if I overheard a conversation, on reading an unsigned letter.
But Albertine remains a mystery.

As in truth she does to the narrator.

Wonder what happens next?

Oh, the irony! I allowed myself to be distracted from reading Proust once again, and what happens? One of the side characters is named Charles Swann, Baron Harwood, went home, too. He closeted himself in his library with his books, bills, and bank statements. Then he blew his brains out, choosing not - http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/?ean=...

Can't get away from it!

Theresa ... the book I showed at our zoom meeting was
The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton.

On the cover of this edition is printed the info that de Botton also wrote: How Proust Can Change Your Life

Book Concierge wrote: "Theresa ... the book I showed at our zoom meeting was
The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton.
On the cover of this edition is printed the info that de Botton also wrote..."

So cool and I have noted it to look into. I also attended - pre-COVID19 - a talk by one of the French journalists who survived Charlie Hebdo attack where he discussed the 3 books that helped him through the aftermath and many surgeries he endured. I can't remember the 3rd book but one was Proust, the other was The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann which I read in college.

Proust pops up everywhere!

Current book we are reading for discussion this week is entitled The Captive. Group discussion leader refers to it as where Albertine practices social distancing. Wish I was farther along in it because the irony...reading this during pandemic where we are under order to social distance.

I've been having trouble with the sense of place, of location, for The Prisoner a/k/a The Captive. It starts and we are told that the narrator is back in Paris, and in fact at the end of Sodom & Gomorrah, there is much about his leaving Balbec early and taking Albertine with him to prevent her from going on a cruise with friends of hers that the narrator believes lure her into lesbian relationships (probably correctly but something that renders the narrator very jealous). Yet, the begining of The Prisoner has a very poor feeling of location, at least to me. Given how incredibly visual Proust is in his writing and evocative of locale, this is unusual. I kept reminding myself that the narrator and Albertine are in Paris, not Balbec. Much of what is mentioned is about people and events from Balbec, incidents that happened in Balbec, even though there are references to it being Paris, and his family's apartment there. Initially I thought that it was me as reader that was at fault, as my reading attention is not as sharp as usual (what I call Pandamic Distraction Syndrome), but now not so sure.

Now I think this was deliberate. I am at about the 25% mark, where Proust starts describing the sounds of Paris that the narrator hears from his bedroom, which is where he spends most of his time. These are the sounds of trams and street vendors that can only be Paris, not Combray in the country or Balbec at the shore. The Captive is after all about being kept isolated - or as someone said - Albertine's social distancing. And also the isolation and social distancing of the narrator. It will be interesting to see where it goes from here, now that the sense of location is more pronounced, less blurred.

And I do have to comment how the introduction of the street sounds heard by the narrator bring to mind the sounds I'm no longer hearing during Shelter in Place, and the sounds that have taken their place during the day especially: birds.

One note: it is in The Captive that very early Proust provides the name of the narrator - or suggests a name for the narrator. He has Albertine call him 'Marcel' -- but in true Proust fashion, the author's voice intrudes and almost makes a joke of it, as in 'oh why not just call him Marcel!"

Wow.

Just past the halfway mark in The Prisoner a/k/a The Captive, our narrator is at Mme Verdurin's salon where an unpublished work of composer Vinteuil is performed, unbeknownst to and initially unrecognized as Vinteuil by the narrator until familiar notes of a musical phrase from Vinteuil's sonata (which is a key theme in the book) are heard. This leads to a lengthy discussion of art and especially music and how a theme from an early great oeuvre can reappear transformed years later at career pinnacle as the heart of a masterpiece, one's greatest work.

Narrator muses that this 'return' is actually tbe revelation of tge artist as 'a native of an unknown country', something he himself has 'forgotten.' That an artist only truly taps into his genius, his greatest creations, upon recognizing this unknown country and his relationship to it.

This immediately connects in my mind to the madeleine and tea, the regaining of memories of times lost. As Marcel the narrator struggles to become a writer throughout this book, unable to find either motivation or inspiration, he is also struggling to capture love, hold on to memory.

Will see how this develops.

From The Prisoner - scene where newly discovered Vinteuil composition is performed -- this passage, just a short section of one of Proust's longest paragraphs, is a exquisite description of an imagined piece of music, which has the narrator finally understand the genius of art, how art allows you to see something you otherwise cannot experience..

Meanwhile the septet, which had begun again, was moving towards its close; again andagain one phrase or another from the sonata recurred, but altered each time, its rhythm and harmony different, the same and yet something else, as things recur in life; andthey were phrases of the sort which, without our being able to understand what affinity assigns to them as their sole and necessary abode the past of a certain composer, are to be found only in his work, and appear constantly in his work, of which theyare the spirits, the dryads, the familiar deities; I had at first distinguished inthe septet two or three which reminded me of the sonata. Presently—bathed in the violetmist which was wont to rise particularly in Vinteuil’s later work, so much so that, even when he introduced a dance measure, it remained captive in the heart of an opal—I caught a hint of another phrase from the sonata, still so distantthat I scarcely recognised it; hesitantly it approached, vanished as though in alarm, then returned, intertwined with others that had come, as I later learned, from otherworks, summoned yet others which became in their turn seductive and persuasive assoon as they were tamed, and took their places in the round, the divine round thatyet remained invisible to the bulk of the audience, who, having before their eyesonly a dim veil through which they saw nothing, punctuated arbitrarily with admiring exclamations a continuous boredom of which they thought they would die. Then the phraseswithdrew, save one which I saw reappear five times or six without being able to distinguishits features, but so caressing, so different—as no doubt the little phrase from thesonata had been for Swann—from anything that any woman had ever made me desire, thatthis phrase—this invisible creature whose language I did not know but whom I understoodso well—which offered me in so sweet a voice a happiness that it would really havebeen worth the struggle to obtain, is perhaps the only Unknown Woman that it has everbeen my good fortune to meet. Then this phrase broke up, was transformed, like the little phrase in the sonata, and became the mysterious call of the start. A phrase of a plaintive kind rose in answer to it, but so profound, so vague, so internal, almost so organic and visceral, that one could not tell at each of its re-entries whether it was a theme or an attack of neuralgia. Presently these two motifs werewrestling together in a close embrace in which at times one of them would disappearentirely, and then only a fragment of the other could be glimpsed. A wrestling matchof disembodied energies only, to tell the truth; for if these creatures confronted one another, they did sostripped of their physical bodies, of their appearance, of their names, finding inme an inward spectator—himself indifferent, too, to names and particulars—to appreciatetheir immaterial and dynamic combat and follow passionately its sonorous vicissitudes. In the end the joyous motif was left triumphant; it was no longer an almost anxious appeal addressed to an empty sky, it was an ineffable joy which seemed to come fromparadise, a joy as different from that of the sonata as some scarlet-clad Mantegna archangel sounding a trumpet from a grave and gentle Bellini seraph strumming a theorbo. I knew that this new tone of joy, this summons to a supraterrestrial joy, was a thingthat I would never forget. But would it ever be attainable to me? This question seemed to me all the more important inasmuch as this phrase was what might have seemed most eloquently to characterise—as contrasting so sharply with all the rest of my life, with the visible world—those impressions which at remote intervals I experienced in my life as starting-points, foundation-stones for the construction of a true life:...

Now about 150 pages from the end of The Prisoner - it's picking up a bit as we are at Mme Verdurin for a salon where a new piece of music is being performed.

One interesting aspect of this book is the number of characters we have encountered that seem to die in this one -- or do they? Bergotte Santiene, Cottard, just to name a few. One of the ways you can tell Proust was still editing this volume when he died is that there are characters who die on one page but appear alive soon after.

Yet thinking about this collection of deaths...is it foreshadowing? We shall have to see.

Dang! It's pretty amazing how the "book" in Proust I happen to be reading at any given time seems to mirror or reflect something about the extreme times we seem to be living. How?

Well, The Prisoner addresses the time Albertine and Marcel cohabitate in Marcel's parents apartment in Paris. He's not in the best of health and also very controlling, basically keeping hidden within the apartment, rarely letting her go out, and not telling anyone about her presence. Albertine is 'socially distancing', in a way 'sheltering in place'. When was I reading it? In April and May as the world sheltered in place during pandemic.

I'm now working my way through The Fugitive which at least in the first half is addressing mourning and loss - initially Albertine's abrupt leaving him and then her permanent departure when she dies in a riding accident. When am I reading it? While the USA explodes in civil protests over the horrific murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police, all caught on a video. We are a country in mourning - over a death. over the entrenched systemic racism of our country.

His discussion of mourning, which being Proust goes on and on for a lot of pages, deserves more attention than I am giving it. I'm behind in reading and have over 500 pages to read before 20 June.

Theresa wrote: "Dang! It's pretty amazing how the "book" in Proust I happen to be reading at any given time seems to mirror or reflect something about the extreme times we seem to be living. How?
..."


I remember when my F2F book club read de Tocqueville's Democracy in America ... we were quite surprised by how topical it was 200 years later. (I just went and looked it up ... we read it in Feb 2006 ... before I joined Shelfari or Good Reads.)

Today I start the last book, Time Regained, the last 400 pages of this journey.

Theresa wrote: "Today I start the last book, Time Regained, the last 400 pages of this journey."

That means I have read 87% of the tome.

And it is worth noting that I am starting Time Regained as NYC slowly reopens after quarantine and we reclaim our lives.

A comment on Albertine Disparue aka The Fugitive.

The descriptions of Venice are some of the best travel writing I have ever enjoyed. These are pages to take with you on a trip there and read while traveling the canals in a gondola.

Brought back the descriptions of the Fortuny gowns and coats described in The Prisoner aka The Captive. Indeed, they are linked.

Also, the passage as narrator is leaving Venice about O Sole Mio and its underlying melancholy brought to mind Pavarotti's perfomances of it, and how he brought that touch of melancholy to it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eQSNVBL...

The lyrics, which I did not know, often as I have heard what is absolutely an 'old chestnut":

Neapolitan Italian
Che bella cosa na jurnata 'e sole,
n'aria serena doppo na tempesta!
Pe' ll'aria fresca pare già na festa...
Che bella cosa na jurnata 'e sole.

Ma n'atu sole
cchiù bello, oje ne'.
O sole mio
sta 'nfronte a te!
O sole
O sole mio
sta 'nfronte a te!
sta 'nfronte a te!

Quanno fa notte e 'o sole se ne scenne,
me vene quase 'na malincunia;
sotto 'a fenesta toia restarria
quanno fa notte e 'o sole se ne scenne.

Ma n'atu sole
cchiù bello, oje ne'.
O sole mio
sta 'nfronte a te!
O sole
O sole mio
sta 'nfronte a te!
sta 'nfronte a te!

English Translation
What a wonderful thing a sunny day
The serene air after a thunderstorm
The fresh air, and a party is already going on…
What a wonderful thing a sunny day.

But another sun,
that’s brighter still
It’s my own sun
that’s in your face!
The sun, my own sun
It’s in your face!
It’s in your face!

When night comes and the sun has gone down,
I start feeling blue;
I’d stay below your window
When night comes and the sun has gone down.

But another sun,
that’s brighter still
It’s my own sun
that’s in your face!
The sun, my own sun
It’s in your face!
It’s in your face!

Well, there ya go-who knew the words? Not me-accept of Oh sun of mine (how an old neighbor in childhood translated it)

A few comments about Time Regained. It is the least edited by Proust (as is Albertine Disparue aka The Fugitive) as he died before he finished editing it. Proust was no light editor, but one who added, deleted, moved around, changed major character names, etc. You could see inconsistencies in The Fugitive; in Time Regained, it feels 'thin'. There is so far at least far more story exposition, less theory and philosophy woven around and through.

And for the first time, the reader is given a date: 1914 and 1916.
It is almost shocking to read. Proust does not prior to this fix this massive work in a specific time. You know from the writing about when it is, but not precisely. Historical personages and events flow through sometimes a bit out of order. It is not important to Proust for the reader to be locked into a particular year, and in fact given one of the major themes is memory which is vague about time by its nature, it suits.

So, what does it mean to suddenly have the narrative fixed in time?

And just like that, I'm finished!

Started: 9/11/2019
Finished: 6/25/2020
3 volumes, 7 books, 3,424 pages - the 1982 'Silver' edition oversized paperback edition.

5 stars. No question. My review of the final volume to come, after tonight's final discussion group. Further musings, favorite passages also to come.

C'est finis. I'm a little teary-eyed. What a journey!

Félicitations! Congratulations on this achievement. Kind of scary to think I did it in one 10-week college term (maybe why I remember so little about it!) It was in the Pléiade edition with thin paper and tiny print.

congratulations!

Robin wrote: "Félicitations! Congratulations on this achievement. Kind of scary to think I did it in one 10-week college term (maybe why I remember so little about it!) It was in the Pléiade edition with thin pa..."

I remember that edition! Astounding. Maybe if it was only class? It is not like it is skimmable!

Theresa wrote: "Robin wrote: "Félicitations! Congratulations on this achievement. Kind of scary to think I did it in one 10-week college term (maybe why I remember so little about it!) It was in the Pléiade editio..."

It was my senior year and it was normal to take only 3 classes at a time because of the 10-week trimester system, as opposed to semesters. And it may be that I only had 2 classes by that time as I had plenty of credits. The other class would have been Russian language which didn't require reading. So I guess that's all I did for those 10 weeks! I usually enjoy reading really long books, but I don't like pages without dialogue or even paragraphs, and that is what Proust is!

I wonder if I was too young to appreciate a lot of it. I have found that with other classics. Reading them when I was 16-22, a lot just rolled off me, having no real experience with deep love, grief, or even the stresses of everyday living.

Haven't listened to all of this yet, but what I have this is great! Coincidentally, it is an event at the same venue that generated and hosted my discussion group.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofR3Q...

I have come to the end of my Proust journey; our affair has ended. It was exhilerating, often difficult, I got really behind and had to push to finish by the last discussion group, but not only did the entire book reach a satisfying end, I totally get why anyone who has taken this journey finds themselves revisiting Proust - either reading again in its entirety or just dipping back.

There are spoilers - if you think you truly might read it, stop here. But everyone else continue, even if you might read but are on the fence.

The last volume starts off with The Captive or The Prisoner as sometimes translated. Albertine has come to Paris and is living with Proust in his family home while his parents are elsewhere for an extended period. She has her own room, but there is intimacy between then. He basically keeps her hidden away, no one knows she is living with him. He becomes more and more obsessed with her relationships with others, particularly women, convinced he can by essentially locking her up keep her from entering into lesbian relationships or being attracted to other women. Almost all this book takes place over a single day, at the end of which she leaves him in the manner he's spent much of the book stating he intends to end it with her. Coincidentally, this book came up to read just as COVID-19 led to social distancing and shelter in place world wide. We all sympathized with Albertine! Of course, much of the question is who was really the prisoner - the narrator or Albertine?

Next up is Albertine Disparue, or The Fugitive, where the narrator copes with her departure, schemes to get her back, continues to hide from the world in his room, and ultimately has to cope with the grief of her permanent departure when news of her death reaches him. There are long sections in which grief is explored and exposed, some of it quite beautiful. He also learns a great deal from others as to just what Albertine had done, with whom, and just how many lies she told him. Of course, some of these 'facts' are highly suspicious to the reader given their source.

Through all these books, we meet up again with various familiar characters - Charlus, the Verdurins, Saint-Loup, Morel, Francoise, and all we have become familiar, their stories interweaving in and around that of Albertine and the narrator. Much is revealed and dang but it seems everyone is gay!

Now we come to the the final volume, in which all is tied up, all is revealed. It's an open ending but its also closure. After all, this has been the journey of a man finally coming into his artistry, of writing a book, this very book we have just read. Here is philosophy shall we say is summarized and defined, a point to which we have spent over 3,000 pages reaching. And too, we attend one more dinner party/salon that is described for pages and pages, where we meet up with all the primary characters of his life, much older, and we get one more glimpse of society. This also allows Proust to talk about aging, allows him to express his concern that he may not live long enough to write the book he now knows he can write. Also the beginning of this book has us in Paris and Combray during WWI.

I'm feeling a little lost. I've been looking forward to finishing and reading some light stuff for a while. Yet I'm reaching for that fat silver paperback with the scribbles and post-its on the pages. Just like any affair, it's hard to let it just 'go'. This books is truly amazing, as relevant today as it was 100 years ago when first published. It does not read in a dated way, the language feels modern. Rarely has there been a book that I have so sunk into, the way you allow long slow indolent days of summer pass when you were young with fewer responsibilities. Remember when summers seemed ot go on forever? Reading Proust is like that. You cannot rush it, even skim it. You can read it a little bit every day, never losing your place. Proust is to be savored. Allowed to just 'be' and to settle into you as no other book ever has.

Remembrance of Things Past, a/k/a In Search of Lost Time a/k/a A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, was a bucket list read. As a french major, I read Swann's Way, Book 1 of Vol 1, in French. While a student in Paris I bought and read in French A L'hombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleur, Book 2 of Vol. 1. I remember little of those readings except the madeleine and tea and how difficult reading the french was due to the long sentences and paragraphs. Or at least I thought that was all I remembered. Turns out not true, although that may also be in part to my also reading in college an English translation of Swann's Way for another class. I always had it in mind to read, and even have a hardcover set of the English translation published in 1982, and several of the books in French, picked up in my travels. All unread.

A couple years ago, I heard about a 2 year discussion group reading of it at the Center for Fiction in NYC. I could not do that at the time, but kept my eye open for an opportunity to participate in a similar group read, not so much because I wanted the group discussion but because I knew that if I had to read a certain amount by a specific date, I would do so whereas I was unlikely to be that disciplined on my own. Turns out I am not alone in that. Last summer, a 9 month reading for first timers was announced, I decided I could fit it in and here we are! It worked. I did enjoy the group discussions too of course.

Overall, it is an astoundingly relevant work, even timeless. It's deeply philosophical and theoretical, but it is also just a coming of age as an artist story. It is also filled with brilliant social satire and portraiture, painting a picture of the Belle Epoque, WWI and society in the aftermath that is wickedly brilliant.

It's funny. It's touching -- and heartbreaking -- the sections where he describes the narrators grief at his Grandmother's death, even her death herself, required a box of kleenex. It's incredibly lyrical, often overly descriptive of nature, but it's also fascinated with modern inventions - - the descriptions of the first uses of the telephone, the advent of motor cars, seeing aeroplanes, indicate an awe and intrigue with all these modern inventions, at the same time he has a long passage about how women's fashions in the early 20th Century are so inadequate compared to the fashions of the Belle Epoque.

His descriptions of Venice - should be mandatory reading of anyone who is a tourist in Venice. Then there is the glorious 'orchid and bee' scene -- where he uses the 'birds and bees' imagery so to speak to mirror the illicet homosexual encounter between two aging men that the narrator witnesses secretly. Definitely one of the most erotic passages I've evern read! Although erotic writers need to read some Proust!

Proust has a gift for 'set pieces' that are very visual -- the role in front of the reader's mind as if you are watching on a screen. One example is when narrator is in Donciere and his friend Saint-Loup comes back into the crowded bar with a coat to wrap around the frail narrator who is chilled - and is leaping across tables and along backs of chairs.

Are the characters likeable? Many are, not everyone likes the same ones. I personally find the narrator himself a very questinable character -creepy, immature, something of a sadist - kind of a nasty little twerp. Others found him sympathetic and maybe just being overly harsh on himself. Again, that's a pretty amazing feat -- that everyone who reads it comes way with a slightly different perception of the main characters.

So what is it about? Ask me in a few years and maybe I will have figured it out. As I mentioned, it's about an artist coming into his own which is in fact the writing of the book we just read, which we only find out at the very end. It's also about a time that is past but is also very much present. And it's about a man named Swann whose influence seems so tangential and unimportant on the narrator. Yet something else happens by the very end.

Read it. Do it slowly - you can read it a few pages at a time, maybe 5 or 6 a day even. I bought my copies of the paperback Silver editions used online for about $15 total all 3 volumes. I found reading the paper print editions far easier and more pleasant than in digital for some reason. In part I think that was being able to tab and mark up my copy -- which I did freely as if it were a college text book. Did I always make sense in my comments or remember why I thought that passage needed highlighter? No, but it somehow seemed the way to read it.

Wonderful notes, Theresa! That may be my only "toe dip" into Proust, however.

(I did read both Moby-Dick or, the Whale and Don Quixote in the last six months ... so I think it will be a while before I feel up to such a challenge.)

Book Concierge wrote: "Wonderful notes, Theresa! That may be my only "toe dip" into Proust, however.

(I did read both Moby-Dick or, the Whale and Don Quixote in the last six months ... so I th..."

I read Moby Dick the summer I turned 18....no desire to revisit actually reading it. Don Q definitely a bucket list read for me.
No way can I take on another big demanding read like these right now. Probably not until 2021! At the discussion group zoom, the leader's young son wandered through at the end and wanted to know what each reading next! Of the 8 of us, I was only one freely admitting to reading fluff...cozy mysteries...for a while. At least one plans to read what others say about Proust and do historical research and reading. Two are rereading from beginning. One is starting War & Peace. One is taking up the works of Shirley Jackson...he was closest to my light reading announcement.

I usually take on a big not easy reading project each year. One year it was Hunger’s Brides: A Novel of the Baroque. Another Middlemarch. There will be a Game of Thrones reread at some point when we know the next volume will be published. But not back to back big reads.

Proust is by far the toughest I have done, although Hunger’s Brides: A Novel of the Baroque was close.

Glad you enjoyed my posts here. Do check back. I will be posting more here for a while. Proust isn't easily religated to the 'read' pile, and there are some passages I want to share.