Psycho Proustians discussion

Hi all, here is a thread for you to post references to anything Proustian that your hearts desire, as long as you do it here and not in the "close reading" threads, which we'd like to keep open for discussion of the actual text of the novel. Have fun!

FREE E-VERSIONS OF SWANN'S WAY

Ok, here is a link to an online version (Moncrieff t/lation) of Swann's Way : https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7178/...

Here is a link to a free download of the Moncrieff in a file format of your choice:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7178

Here is a link to a free download of the original French version:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2650

Here is a link to an online version of the French:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2650/...

Okay, I've hit GOLD: I found this - it's the Kilmartin reworking of the Moncrieff version. I read it a bit and I see why Stephen likes it: It's a MUCH nicer version than the original Moncrieff, and at least as good if not better than the Davis.

So please, if you can, download this version while it's still available:
https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads...

..and if you will excuse me, I'll include a write-up touting the Kilmartin translation:

" Terence Kilmartin, author of the present version, which is not, he emphasizes, a completely new translation, gives three reasons for having ''revised'' Moncrieff. The most important and persuasive is his assertion that Moncrieff worked from a ''notoriously imperfect'' original edition, made so by Proust's eccentric habits of composition and especially revision. This edition has since been supplanted by the essentially authoritative ''Pleiade edition'' of 1954. Kilmartin used this text hand in hand with Moncrieff's English version.

Kilmartin also claims (reason two) that Moncrieff frequently ''bowdlerized''; Kilmartin's own versions of sexual scenes are more explicit in physical details but not in feelings, yet the point remains that, in comparison even with other writers of his time, Proust is basically restrained and reticent.

There is something to Kilmartin's (reason three) claim that he has ''simplified'' Moncrieff's stiff Latinate prose. This needed doing, considering also the Proustian penchant for long ''labryinthine'' sentences.

For example, here's a Kilmartin sentence: ''Only the desire that she aroused in others, when, on learning of it, I began to suffer again and wanted to challenge their possession of her, raised her in my eyes to a lofty pinnacle.''
In Moncrieff's version, there's a comma after ''Only,'' ''others'' is ''other people,'' ''on learning of it'' is ''upon hearing of it,'' ''again'' is ''afresh ,'' ''wanted'' is ''was impelled,'' and ''eyes'' is ''sight.'' The sentence has, in the present translation, been made more colloquial, but not, I submit, more clear. I compared about three dozen passages, and found nothing much different from the above.

There are reorderings of material, particularly in Volume 7, and restorations. The best of these, to be found in an ''Appendix'' following Volume 2, is the tale of the Princesse de Guermantes's pointless passion for the woman-hating Charlus. ''Addenda'' and ''Notes'' are sensibly minimal. A detailed ''Synopsis'' with page references is extremely helpful."

Traveller, thank you for posting links to the French originals. I was just about to ask Manny where he got his for the LARA recordings, but I see you've provided it for us - much appreciated.

Side note on language learning techniques: I plan to do for French here what I've done for Japanese. Take the original, turn it into a PDF copy (through Adobe Acrobat). This allows us to annotate the texts. So, at the beginning of a paragraph or sentence, I take the translation and put it into a yellow-colored bubble. For words I don't know, I add dictionary definitions in red bubbles. It takes a lot of time to set this up, but once it's set up, it's very easy to toggle between language and its meanings. Ideally, we won't need the bubbles/annotations, just the native language. But I've found this to be an excellent method to jump start my Japanese comprehension - hopefully for French now, too (granted there's time for it).

Manny's LARA recordings will be outstanding for this, because it will help reinforce the readings with listening comprehension, two entirely different skills. So again, much thanks to Manny for providing this for us.

So glad you found the Kilmartin version! Yup, that's the one I'm using, and in PDF too where I can add my voluminous (he, he) notes to what we're reading.

I will share here what I have learned on available translations of Proust in English, along with some Goodreads links to make location easier where possible. (I am not endorsing any particular edition, just trying to help sift through the giant pile of editions to particular translations.)

[NOTE: UPDATED November 2022 while I was trying to figure out what I have in my stack and again December 2022.]

Wikipedia gives a helpful start as always, though slightly out of date on publication information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Sear...

In summary:

CK Scott Moncrieff's translation: Remembrance of Things Past, 1922 to 1930, with Stephen Hudson finishing the last volume in 1931. (Frank Bloom did a translation of the last volume for the US in 1932.) (I will find Goodreads links for these later, but see the links to Project Gutenberg above.)

Terence Kilmartin revision of Moncrieff, 1981, based on a revised French edition of the work done in 1954. (I'll add links here as well.)

DJ Enright's revision of Kilmartin, In Search of Lost Time, 1992, based on La Pléiade French edition, published as the Modern Library edition in the US (and now also available in other editions).


In 1995, Penguin commissioned a new translation from La Pléiade (except apparently for The Prisoner, which has a more definitive text available (?)). edited by Christopher Prendergast and using seven different translators.


I'm going to list these out individually here with the translators for ease of reference:
Swann's Way: Lydia Davis
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower: James Grieve
The Guermantes Way: Mark Treharne
Sodom and Gomorrah: John Sturrock
The Prisoner: Carol Clark
The Fugitive: Peter Collier
Finding Time Again: Ian Patterson

A note here on US publication of these volumes, which is confusing as heck because of Sonny Bono's copyright extension law: The first four volumes were published by Viking, but they had to stop there and wait for copyright to run out on the original Proust before they could continue. They haven't continued. Penguin republished the translations in the editions you see above in the US. Crucially, they split what was volume 5 in the international edition into two volumes in the new US edition, The Prisoner and The Fugitive. So in spite of everything you will see insisting that this translation has six volumes, that's not true in the US. There are seven. And the last one STILL hasn't been released in the US, because copyright on Finding Time Again doesn't run out in the US until 2022. (Presumably someone at Penguin is sitting with a finger over the publish button for the moment it does so we can get it with a matching cover. I hope.) (Update: AND THEY DID! Available 1/10/2023 in the US. Corrected to the new final edition in the series list above.)

Yale is now also publishing a new (and ongoing) revision of Moncrieff (and probably Hudson and Andreas Mayor's original translation for Time Regained*) by William Carter, currently finished through Captive and the Fugitive (pub 2023).

*Much thanks to Marcelita for the clarification on this.

Finally, NYRB is making James Grieve's translation of Swann's Way available separately in 2023 (it's not clear to me if this is a reprint of his 1982 translation or a new translation):

(There will be no continuation of the series as Mr. Grieve passed in 2020.) (Thanks to Jacob for bringing this to our attention. I haven't really made note of single work translations, but since he did the second volume of the Penguin new translation, this might be of interest to some as another comparison to Davis.

Harvard is publishing an English translation (by Sam Taylor) of Proust's Folios (including early drafts of his great work) in 2023:


There is also a new translation out of Swann in Love, which is I think just Swann's Way without the Combray section. It's by Lucy Raitz.

Wow, thorough as always, Amy! Trust you to come up with the goods!

That's a very informative post, and very well-organized. I didn't know a few things there - especially those last bits about the even newer version, and the copyright not having run out yet on that last volume.
I love seeing in my mind's eye, the exec sitting with his finger poised on the button, XD I certainly hope that he's doing that, as well!
Now you have piqued my curiosity about the Yale revision - but wait, yet ANOTHER revision of Moncrieff? 🥴

Traveller wrote: "Now you have piqued my curiosity about the Yale revision - but wait, yet ANOTHER revision of Moncrieff? 🥴"

Right? But so it is! Carter is apparently the guy on Proust right now, so I'm sure it will be some sort of worthy contribution. I'm really curious to see it now, but I probably won't get my copy for another week or two.

Here's what I read that encouraged me to go w/Moncrieff -- which in turn encouraged me to go on and begin, since I had my copy. It's a 2015 New Yorker article by Adam Gopnik, whom I like. It's generally consistent with Stephen's comment on the General Interest thread, I think. And it's about the translator as well as Proust. P.S. You get a few free articles per month even if not a subscriber.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-...

And here's a more recent article, a general overview, the most recent one I read, that piqued my interest and led toward my accepting Traveller's invitation. Same writer, same source
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

Just a thought here.

I'm looking for an essay I read on William James and his likely influence on Proust. It studied the paragraph about the "chain of hours" but I can't find it. However, Gutenberg - bless them - has the Principles of Psychology available - here are a few tantalising thoughts on consciousness that makes reading the overture just a little more interesting:

Consciousness, from our natal day, is of a teeming multiplicity of objects and relations, and what we call simple sensations are results of discriminative attention, pushed often to a very high degree.

and this tasty thought - is Proust "breaching" the relationship between minds?

Each of these minds keeps its own thoughts to itself. There is no giving or bartering between them. No thought even comes into direct sight of a thought in another personal consciousness than its own. Absolute insulation, irreducible pluralism, is the law. It seems as if the elementary psychic fact were not thought or this thought or that thought, but my thought, every thought being owned. Neither contemporaneity, nor proximity in space, nor similarity of quality and content are able to fuse thoughts together which are sundered by this barrier of belonging to different personal minds. The breaches between such thoughts are the most absolute breaches in nature.

I recognise when reading this book that an opening is achieved where sensations I know that have never dared had an explanation suddenly do - like the sensation of disturbed sleep. Proust throws up little moments like this all the time when I say "yes, I know that experience, though I have never articulated it."

So Proust takes us into the artful domain to perform a breach of this separation of consciousness with the idea that he is both narrator and subject in the opening pages.

I should be working...

Jan, much thanks for the links. Count Gopnik too among the New Yorkers who favor Moncrieff then. Interesting how he attributes Proust's poetry to his (French) preference for abstraction and ellipsis.

Out of all the supplementary material Gopnik lists, I think I'm most interested in reading more about Proust's Jewishness, from the volume on Jewish Lives. I've already read one from that series on Leon Blum, the socialist leader of France in the late thirties. Two of France's preeminent politicians of the time, Blum and Clemenceau, actually mixed in Proust's social milieu. Can't even fathom such encounters ever happening in America, now or then. Can you picture anyone ever saying something like this: "Oh yes, Kamala Harris and Dick Cheney, why they got their start hanging out with the poets and aesthetes." Utterly unimaginable.

Jozef Czapski published this extraordinary book of lectures given from memory on Proust in a Russian prisoner of war camp. He gave the lectures to his fellow Polish officer prisoners from memory and recreated them in this book. Each night the weary overworked, half frozen men would sit down and listen to some intellectual pursuit, whether architecture, engineering or literature. It was a kind of salve in the midst of war and deprivation

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

If anyone is interested, these 400 polish officers were the survivors of the massacre in the Katya Forest. A strange moment in WWII history.

Nick, you might want to check out the links Jan gave us. If pressed for time, check out the second one. Gopnik has a few words on space and time, Proust and Shakespeare, like you've been adding for us. In the first, Gopnik proposes the theory that Moncrieff really relied on William's brother Henry (James) for his translation.

From the quote, James's "Absolute insulation, irreducible pluralism, is the law" stood out. James meant each individual locked within their own minds, all unable to meet in the middle for being so insulated from each other. Sounds like the internet lol. Overture shows that a version of this was happening within Proust's own mind. And then came the madeleine...

"I should be working..." Why? Lol.

Stephen wrote: "Nick, you might want to check out the links Jan gave us. If pressed for time, check out the second one. Gopnik has a few words on space and time, Proust and Shakespeare, like you've been adding for..."

The Gopnik essay is interesting on Moncreiff's waffly bits. And I now realise that I noticed such bits on first reading - but I can never know which are direct in French but waffle in English. I did also wonder at some puritanical parts first time around. My self-taught French is reserved for recipes: easy to follow.

Anyway too much pre-reading is like procrastinating. I am reading the vintage edition with the pretty flowers on the cover.

Thanks for the links, Jan and Nick. Nick, you are so right about the sidereading = procrastination thing.

I'm thinking that people who do peripheral reading about Proust and his times, would have heard of a few things mentioned that may be of interest. I'm going to mention one tragedy that happened just before Proust was born, which helps to sketch some of the sociological, cultural and political background of the time, and that is the tragedy that befell the Paris Commune.
I actually have a book or two on this but for expediency's sake I'm quoting directly from Wikipedia:

The Paris Commune (French: Commune de Paris, pronounced was a far-left revolutionary socialist government that controlled Paris from 18 March to 28 May 1871.

During the events of the Franco-Prussian War, Paris had been defended by the National Guard, where working class radicalism grew among soldiers. In March 1871, during the establishment of the Third Republic under French chief executive Adolphe Thiers, soldiers of the National Guard seized control of the city and then refused to accept the authority of the French government, instead attempting to establish an independent government.

The Commune governed Paris for two months, establishing policies that tended toward a progressive, anti-religious system of social democracy, including the separation of church and state, self-policing, the remission of rent during the siege, the abolition of child labor, and the right of employees to take over an enterprise deserted by its owner. Feminist, socialist, and anarchist currents played important roles in the Commune. However, they had very little time to put their policies into effect.

The Commune was eventually suppressed by the national French Army during La semaine sanglante ("The Bloody Week") beginning on 21 May 1871. Between 6,000 and 7,000 Communards are confirmed to have been killed in battle or executed, though some unconfirmed estimates are as high as 20,000. The Archbishop of Paris, Georges Darboy, and other hostages were shot by the Commune in retaliation. Debates over the policies and outcome of the Commune had significant influence on the ideas of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, who described it as the first example of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

================================================

The second thing, which will be mentioned later in Proust's novel, is the Dreyfuss Affair I'll edit this post to add a bit of background on that. What the heck, I'm going to be lazy and do a Wikipedia thing again:

The Dreyfus affair (French: l'affaire Dreyfus, pronounced [lafɛːʁ dʁɛfys]) was a political scandal that divided the Third French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. "L'Affaire", as it is known in French, has come to symbolise modern injustice in the Francophone world, and it remains one of the most notable examples of a complex miscarriage of justice and antisemitism. The role played by the press and public opinion proved influential in the conflict.

The scandal began in December 1894 when Captain Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason. Dreyfus was a 35-year-old Alsatian French artillery officer of Jewish descent. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, and was imprisoned in Devil's Island in French Guiana, where he spent nearly five years.

In 1896, evidence came to light—primarily through an investigation instigated by Georges Picquart, head of counter-espionage—which identified the real culprit as a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. When high-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, a military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy after a trial lasting only two days. The Army laid additional charges against Dreyfus, based on forged documents. Subsequently, Émile Zola's open letter J'Accuse…! stoked a growing movement of support for Dreyfus, putting pressure on the government to reopen the case.

In 1899, Dreyfus was returned to France for another trial. The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (now called "Dreyfusards"), such as Sarah Bernhardt, Anatole France, Henri Poincaré and Georges Clemenceau, and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards), such as Édouard Drumont, the director and publisher of the antisemitic newspaper La Libre Parole. The new trial resulted in another conviction and a 10-year sentence, but Dreyfus was pardoned and released. In 1906, Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army. He served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He died in 1935.

The affair from 1894 to 1906 divided France into pro-republican, anticlerical Dreyfusards and pro-Army, mostly Catholic "anti-Dreyfusards". It embittered French politics and encouraged radicalisation.

And since we're already surmising about a lot of Proust's background, here's a nice short summary that I found in my Norton's copy of Swann's Way. (These Norton critical editions are wonderful companions to a text!)

Proust was born July 10, 1871, in the immediate aftermath of the Paris Commune, the son of a respected Catholic doctor and a Jewish mother from a wealthy family. At the time of his birth, his mother was very unwell and Proust himself was so sick and frail that he was not expected to survive.

He remained a delicate child, suffering his first asthma attack at the age of ten; by the time he was thirty-eight, breathing problems had more or less confined him to his bed. His brother Robert was born two years after him.

Though Proust was baptized, he neither practiced Catholicism nor identified with his mother’s matrilineal religion. Indeed, if he is well known as a Jewish writer, it is because of a political act rather than a religious one.

In the 1890s, when a French Jewish army captain, Alfred Dreyfus, was wrongly convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment, Proust added his voice to the officer’s defense. The Dreyfus Affair, which galvanized French anti-Semitism and divided the country (it culminated in a 1905 law separating church from state), exposed Proust to criticisms both from aristocratic defenders of the army and from his own Catholic father.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Carter is apparently the guy on Proust right now, so I'm sure it will be some sort of worthy contribution."

OMG, Whoopee! (I guess?) I have now also found a copy of this Yale edited by Carter edition - published 2013. On the one hand, I'm thrilled that I now have pretty much all of the translations, (I think?) but on the other hand, it tempts me to check all of them out when I come to beautiful passages, and that eats away at my time... Oh, the woes of overabundance.... :P

That is also an issue I am dealing with LOL. But I guess if there is a book to read four times at once, it's this one, right? That's what I'm telling myself anyway!

This article about how our brains react to what we read, is a must for Proustians! https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/op...

In fact, even if you decide not to read Proust, this article is extremely interesting to all those who consume fiction.

I couldn't access The NY Times article, Traveller, but I managed to view the BBC one you posted on the Combray discussion page. The last line was very apropos of reading Proust:
Finally, novels allow us to do something that is hard to do in our own lives, which is to view a character’s life over many years.

Coincidently, today a friend sent me a link to a New Yorker piece which contains the first English translation of some of the pages from Proust's 1908 notebooks in which he'd written his early drafts for the Recherche (the first book was published in 1913):
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

Fionnuala, I saw (haven't yet read) that in latest issue!

Fionnuala wrote: "I couldn't access The NY Times article, Traveller, but I managed to view the BBC one you posted on the Combray discussion page. The last line was very apropos of reading Proust:
"
Ok, sorry about that, I'll look for another similar one, or post the BBC one in this thread as well.

Fionnuala wrote: "Coincidently, today a friend sent me a link to a New Yorker piece which contains the first English translation of some of the pages from Proust's 1908 notebooks in which he'd written his early drafts for the Recherche."

Well, isn't the timing of that rather remarkable, or I suppose it just feels like it because we're currently doing a reading...

Jan wrote: "Fionnuala, I saw (haven't yet read) that in latest issue!"

The piece introduces some of the characters from the second half of the second book, Jan, but the final version was quite a bit different from that early draft—which makes it a very interesting document.

Traveller wrote: "Well, isn't the timing of that rather remarkable, or I suppose it just feels like it because we're currently doing a reading..."

The notebooks were only published in France in 2018, Traveller, so that's perhaps why they are only now appearing in an English translation.

Wow, a lot of amazing facts and interpretations from you guys. I love the discussions on translation. It seems the nature of translation and its attendant byproducts (mainly interpretational) offers a very Proustian take on communication and thought in general. We all think we're reading the same thing -- but in reality, we're each reading our own novel by Proust, and the author himself thought he wrote something totally different still. The same thing to some extent with any book, right?

But I dont quite agree with William James' assertion that we're all trapped in our own solipsistic thought bubbles and that breaches of consciousness or theophanies are so rare or so miraculous. Or, I do believe that, but a breach is not so uncommon as he thinks. William seems (and I may be wrong, I've only read his brother) to me to be the kind of guy who doesnt believe in magic. If you do believe in magic then it probably occurs way more often that one might expect; and what more proof of magic's existence does one need than this Proust discussion group?

Proust causes a magical breach in consciousness sometimes multiple times a page; we each can sense it (although often in different places), despite the translation!

Consciousness must be semi-permeable. Is Proust then so superb at defining the nature of humanity, possibly because he can transcend at will?

Cymru wrote: "offers a very Proustian take on communication and thought in general. We all think we're reading the same thing -- but in reality, we're each reading our own novel by Proust, and the author himself thought he wrote something totally different still. ..."

How very apt, indeed, Cymru! I suspect we needed someone (with an analytical mind) to come in from the outside to note that, thanks for pointing it out.

Re W. James and epistemology/phenomenology, I think that a lot of authors and thinkers can be referred to from the Proustian point of view. But actually, now that you mention it, Proust's work touches on a lot of ontological questions as well. So yeah, a LOT of discussion is possible once you start out on that path...
Anyway, thanks for your nice (magical!) comments! :)

Fionnuala wrote: "The notebooks were only published in France in 2018, Traveller, so that's perhaps why they are only now appearing in an English translation.."

Hmm, though that was still before his death. So it's not as if there was some posthumous kerfuffle, it looks more as if it was simply being kept by the publishers? Anyway, that just strengthens my theory - I tell you, they were waiting for us! ;)

I'm being silly. Silliness aside, here is the BBC article:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20...

and here is another very interesting article:
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/arti...

EDIT: Sorry, I was in a hurry when I posted these last two comments, but Cymru, actually these two or three articles that I'm linking to, comes to the same phenomenon (of recreating a version of what we read in our heads and even reacting to it with our bodies) from a neuroscience point of view, so I do hope you'll have a peep at them!

Cymru, hello, thanks for your comments. We've noted a few instances where Proust's French provides no bridge to English. For specific instances where we'd want to quote him to make a point, we might not actually be quoting the right Proust. But on the larger scheme, you said the absolutely right thing when you said, "we're each reading our own novel by Proust." It's both true and helpful. Proust teaches us how he made intuitive connections, and we in turn learn how to make our own intuitive connections, for insights even Proust himself couldn't see for the world he inhabited. His writing can be very generous that way, and I'd say that's very exciting.

About Proust, William James, and magical breaches, check out James's Varieties of Religious Experience sometime, if you're interested in exploring the questions further. There, James describes the "oceanic" cosmic feeling many artists and thinkers have experienced and transmitted to us. Whitman, for example, had it, and it led to his source of poetry. Proust had it, which was what he described as happening to him at the end of the Overture section, so definitely, the magic is all around us!

In another thread, Stephen wrote: Traveller, I don't know if you've come across it yet, but someone has written a book called Proust Was A Neuroscientist. Subsequent to this book, which was a big success, the author, Jonah Lehrer, got into some trouble over plagiarism charges (including lifting from Jan's Adam Gopnick!); though that doesn't seem to have been a problem with the Proust book. You might want to first check out the Wiki page on Lehrer for Lehrer's aims (the need to fuse art and science thinking, for one) and the responses his book elicited. A Chris McManus, professor of psychology and medical education out of London began his review by saying, "Oh no he wasn't!" Those without science training, the Wiki page says, tended to welcome Lehrer's ideas...."

I have indeed come across the book, Stephen, I own a copy. I've actually been remiss in not mentioning books that mention or deal with Proust in this thread, I'll start working on it.

About the book in question, Proust Was a Neuroscientist - I haven't read it, but I did glance through it and shelved it for later. Why I've not mentioned it before, is because firstly we were going to initially do a close reading, and secondly, the title of the book is a bit misleading, in that it's not a book exclusively about Proust, but rather more a book about artists and science, and Proust himself is only dealt with in depth in one chapter, among other artists that the book deals with.

One of the interesting things that the book mentions, and I have heard this elsewhere too, is that Proust was influenced by the scholar Henri Bergson.

I quote from the book:

The essence of Bergson's philosophy was a fierce resistance to a mechanistic view of the universe. The laws of science were fine for inert matter, Bergson said, for discerning the relationships between atoms and cells, but us? We had a consciousness, a memory, a being. According to Bergson, this reality—the reality of our self-consciousness—could not be reduced or experimentally dissected. He believed that we could only understand ourselves through intuition, a process that required lots of introspection, lazy days contemplating our inner connections. Basically, it was bourgeois meditation.

Proust was one of the first artists to internalize Bergson's philosophy. His literature became a celebration of intuition, of all the truths we can know just by lying in bed and quietly thinking. And while Bergson's influence was not without its anxiety for Proust—"I have enough to do," he wrote in a letter, "without trying to turn the philosophy of M. Bergson into a novel!"—Proust still couldn't resist Bergsonian themes.

Bergson wrote a few books, if anyone is interested in looking him up.

Oh, and re Lehrer plagiarizing Dylan, thanks to my friend Darwin8u's review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... of this book, we have a link to an article on the Dylan debacle: https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news...

There are of course a myriad books and articles which deal with Proust, but, like Nick said in an earlier post, "... too much pre-reading is like procrastinating" and that's so true. If we were to read all the possible pre-reading, we would never get to Proust's work itself.

I will link to a few of them soon, but maybe some of it should be done in the threads as we go along. I do think we should perhaps just proceed a bit further before I start posting suggestions, because I myself still have to read more actual Proust before too much side reading, in the form of entire books, will make any sense.
I prefer "discovering" things in books myself, to perhaps have them affirmed later on by side-reading. For example, I accidentally discovered Gabriel Garcia Marques as a young teenager already, long before I knew what Magical Realism was. All I knew was that I liked something about the style, and that was enough for the time being.

A wonderful, two-minute clip on novelist & historian Shelby Foote showing us his Proust shelf at his Memphis home. Throughout his delightful correspondence with novelist Walker Percy, Foote is seen forever trying to get his dear friend to read Proust, to no avail. The exchange between these two writers, especially on Proust, is illuminating. Because Percy was a committed Catholic, he may have felt no dying need to read Proust, particularly for aid to his writing. Foote, who never specified any religious affiliation, felt much illuminated by Proust's sense experience, and the way he was able to transfer it to us, his lucky readers. He felt his friend was trying too hard to send a message through his books, and tried to talk him out of this habit by reading Proust.

Much in this clip is charming, but I especially like host Brian Lamb's reaction when Foote tells him he has read Proust nine times, front to back.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c465602...

Stephen wrote: "A wonderful, two-minute clip on novelist & historian Shelby Foote showing us his Proust shelf at his Memphis home. Throughout his delightful correspondence with novelist Walker Percy, Foote is seen..."

NINE times!!!! Ok, I need to get reading....

Btw, I've been greatly distracted lately by all the writers and artists that Proust starts referencing.

Hi guys, can anyone please recommend me a good Anatole France that would be typical of the author?

Something I came across today looking into Proust's Jewishness from tabletmag if anyone is interested.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/ar...

The article comes out of the recent publication of early drafts AKA 'The Lost Manuscript'

Ah, yes! Those early drafts are what I was talking about in comment #23. They are called the Soixante-quinze feuillets in French and their publication finally in 2018 was big news in France. Interesting title that Tablet article has. Yes, the madeleine was originally a 'biscotte' which were not regular toast but little twice cooked slices that you buy in a packet and eat with butter/jam or dipped in tea or coffee or tisane usually for early breakfast before you have time to buy fresh bread. But some people prefer them to fresh bread.

Fionnuala wrote: "Ah, yes! Those early drafts are what I was talking about in comment #23. They are called the Soixante-quinze feuillets in French and their publication finally in 2018 was big news in France. Intere..."

I know those little toasts. My mother still has them for breakfast.

Traveller wrote: "Hi guys, can anyone please recommend me a good Anatole France that would be typical of the author?"

I read one of his books some years ago, Traveller, but I don't if it was typical. It was called Le lys rouge. One of the interesting things in it for me was a character who appeared to be very like Marcel Proust! A few others resembled characters in the Recherche.

Nick wrote: "I know those little toasts. My mother still has them for breakfast."

Quelle! Pas le beurre?

Si tu veux du beurre, il en faut battre :-)

Fionnuala wrote: "Si tu veux du beurre, il en faut battre :-)"

An old proverb? Don't tell me it's one of Francoise?

I can just imagine Françoise saying that, Nick! And she may even have made butter in that 'antre' of hers, that temple à Vénus' as the narrator describes it.
But no, I see on the next line that she got all her diary produce from the 'crémier': [La cuisine] regorgeait des offrandes du crémier, du fruitier, de la marchande de légumes, venus parfois de hameaux assez lointains…

Fionnuala wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Hi guys, can anyone please recommend me a good Anatole France that would be typical of the author?"

I read one of his books some years ago, Traveller, but I don't if it was typical. It was called Le lys rouge. One of the interesting things in it for me was a character who appeared to be very like Marcel Proust! A few others resembled characters in the Recherche."

So Proust has a character based on France, and France has a character based on Proust? I wonder how many such pairs there are in world literature. Evidently Sartre and de Beauvoir are another.

Isn't it interesting, Manny!
Quoting from my own review ;-) here's what I noticed back when I read Anatole France's book: Anatole France’s mistress had a literary salon which Proust attended and the character of the young writer Paul Vence in Le Lys Rouge resembles Proust himself. France’s mistress was famous for refusing to have any boring people attend her salon so she may be the model for Proust’s Mme Verdurin who had a similar rule for her salon. Like 'A la Recherche' itself, this makes for a very interesting roman à clef.

Though in fact Mme Verdurin has some spectacularly boring people in her "petit noyau" - was the same true of France's mistress?

I suspect that at least one of the authors in Dance to the Music of Time is based on a real author who returned the compliment, but I don't actually know of any such case...

Manny wrote: "Though in fact Mme Verdurin has some spectacularly boring people in her "petit noyau" - was the same true of France's mistress..."

I think there were a few characters who were given to 'long turns' in the salon that the fictional Paul Vince attended, but he wasn't one of them, being more of an observer which is partly why he reminded me of Marcel Proust.
I think I just presumed that Anatole France had based the fictional salon on his real-life mistress's salon, and was struck by the parallel about the 'boring people' rule in Proust's own book. Other than that rule, I know little about the mistress's real-life salon. The book is very hazy in my memory so I'm grateful I wrote a review.
I still have to read the Powell books—I remember vowing to get to them back when you and Kalliope were going through them.

I just finished reading Virginie Despentes big fat 21st century monsterpiece Vernon Subutex (the Frank Wynne translation published in the US) so going over 100 years back in time to keep reading La France is trippy so far.

Kate, that's a very apt parallel Paris reference you've just pointed out. Vernon is like a 21st century Proust narrator, confined in his apartment trying to remember bits of his past, the women he obsessed about, the ones he treated badly, the friends, the places, the times that are gone. And all the colourful people who float in and out of the narrative are not unlike Proust's cast of characters in all their diversity. Paris of course is a radically different place in Vernon Subutex. Despentes presents the side that Proust only hints at, the trans people, the poor, the down-and-outs, the drug addicts, the sex workers, the porn industry, the right wing thugs. When you meet Odette in Proust, you'll see how she could fit right into Despentes' book:-)

Kate wrote: "I just finished reading Virginie Despentes big fat 21st century monsterpiece Vernon Subutex (the Frank Wynne translation published in the US) so going over 100 years back in time to keep reading La..."

Thank you for this, Kate. I was unaware of this work. Will check it out.

The Carnavalet museum is organising an exhibition on Proust.

It opened today

https://www.carnavalet.paris.fr/expos...

I have purchased but not been able to look through it yet, the catalogue.

Marcel Proust: Un roman parisien

Kalliope wrote: "The Carnavalet museum is organising an exhibition on Proust.

It opened today

https://www.carnavalet.paris.fr/expos...

I have purchased but not been able to l..."

Hope you enjoyed it, Kalliope!