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jeremidoucet's review against another edition
"Que celui qui pourrait écrire un tel livre serait heureux, pensais-je, quel labeur devant lui! Pour en donner une idée, c'est aux arts les plus élevés et les plus différents qu'il faudrait emprunter des comparaisons; car cette écrivain, qui d'ailleurs pour chaque caractère en ferait apparaître les faces opposées, pour montrer son volume, devrait préparer son livre, minutieusement, avec de perpétuels regroupements de force, comme une offensive, le supporter comme une fatigue, l'accepter comme une règle, le construire comme une église, le suivre comme un régime, le vaincre comme un obstacle, le conquérir comme une amitié, le suralimenter comme un enfant, le créer comme un monde sans laisser de côté ces mystères qui n'ont probablement leur explication que dans d'autres mondes et dont le pressentiment est ce qui nous émeut le plus dans la vie et dans l'art."
kingkong's review against another edition
5.0
Its amazing how much better the books are when he's writing about other people and their adventures than when he's philosophizing but its still worth it
franfernandezarce's review against another edition
5.0
a book is a huge cemetery in which on the majority of the tombs the names are effaced and can no longer be read
and then there were none.
in 2017, i read all of virginia woolf's novels and some of her non-fiction and loved the whole experience. so, at the end of that year, i decided i would set a reading challenge for myself again around a single author. something lengthy that would take considerable commitment. i cannot tell you my reasoning at the moment but the idea of reading the whole of marcel proust's in search of lost time's series seemed like a good idea back then. now, eight months into the year, i'm done.
seven books (or six if you count bind-ups as single books), 3,450 pages, and a shit-ton of words later, i'm done.
and, being perfectly honest, i'm going to miss this world. i do understand the people who can't bring themselves to finish this. won't blame or judge them at all. to be honest, i'm pretty sure most people fall after the second one (it's the least entertaining in my opinion) but i can promise you (and i say this from experience) that once you've passed the second book, everything comes easily your way. your brain somehow readjusts itself around the writing style and the characters are mentioned throughout time so repeatedly you never forget them (despite the considerable size of the cast).
and, at the risk of being overly sentimental, it is really worth your while.
but, did i love love this?
remember when return of the king won the oscar for best picture even though everyone and their grandmas can agree that the two towers is the best of the three films but they had to give them the award because it was the last one? that is, more or less, what i'm trying to do with my rating here.
if i were to be honest with myself, i would give this another 4/4.5 rating. it was good (quite good, really), enjoyable, and at times surprisingly sad, but it wasn't great. still, like i said, 3,450 pages later, i can't not give this five stars just for the sheer commitment of creating this monumental piece of literature.
put all seven books stacked together and you would not only have a potential murder weapon but one huge stack of observations on humanity. almost 3,500 pages about living and being alive with all the insecurities, maddening issues and shinny-happy moments that come with being a human being--regardless of time period (pun very much intended). it's such a massive work that i can't really sum it up better than that; it would probably take me something around the length of one of these books to properly express every single moment that had some level of resonance with me. alas, i don't have the time nor the interest in doing such a thing--although i'm a bit sad that it is over, i'm also liberated from not having to read it anymore).
now, i feel an emptiness within me. it filled sucha huge part of my reading life, it feels strange to think there isn't a next book for me to pick. that being said, i'm not sentimental enough to want to re-read them anytime soon. ask me in a couple of decades probably and i'll tell if i've changed my mind or not
and then there were none.
in 2017, i read all of virginia woolf's novels and some of her non-fiction and loved the whole experience. so, at the end of that year, i decided i would set a reading challenge for myself again around a single author. something lengthy that would take considerable commitment. i cannot tell you my reasoning at the moment but the idea of reading the whole of marcel proust's in search of lost time's series seemed like a good idea back then. now, eight months into the year, i'm done.
seven books (or six if you count bind-ups as single books), 3,450 pages, and a shit-ton of words later, i'm done.
and, being perfectly honest, i'm going to miss this world. i do understand the people who can't bring themselves to finish this. won't blame or judge them at all. to be honest, i'm pretty sure most people fall after the second one (it's the least entertaining in my opinion) but i can promise you (and i say this from experience) that once you've passed the second book, everything comes easily your way. your brain somehow readjusts itself around the writing style and the characters are mentioned throughout time so repeatedly you never forget them (despite the considerable size of the cast).
and, at the risk of being overly sentimental, it is really worth your while.
but, did i love love this?
remember when return of the king won the oscar for best picture even though everyone and their grandmas can agree that the two towers is the best of the three films but they had to give them the award because it was the last one? that is, more or less, what i'm trying to do with my rating here.
if i were to be honest with myself, i would give this another 4/4.5 rating. it was good (quite good, really), enjoyable, and at times surprisingly sad, but it wasn't great. still, like i said, 3,450 pages later, i can't not give this five stars just for the sheer commitment of creating this monumental piece of literature.
put all seven books stacked together and you would not only have a potential murder weapon but one huge stack of observations on humanity. almost 3,500 pages about living and being alive with all the insecurities, maddening issues and shinny-happy moments that come with being a human being--regardless of time period (pun very much intended). it's such a massive work that i can't really sum it up better than that; it would probably take me something around the length of one of these books to properly express every single moment that had some level of resonance with me. alas, i don't have the time nor the interest in doing such a thing--although i'm a bit sad that it is over, i'm also liberated from not having to read it anymore).
now, i feel an emptiness within me. it filled sucha huge part of my reading life, it feels strange to think there isn't a next book for me to pick. that being said, i'm not sentimental enough to want to re-read them anytime soon. ask me in a couple of decades probably and i'll tell if i've changed my mind or not
fishsauce's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
mashygpig's review against another edition
5.0
What a conclusion! While reading to the end isn’t necessary to get a good understanding of what the book is about, Proust provides a perspective that frames it all rather elegantly. I don’t think I’ve reflected on my own life as much as I have while reading any other book (but that’s partially due to the length!). Proust’s intense focus on so many facets of his own life inspires a similar focus on ones own, which can be rather interesting and productive.
nwhyte's review against another edition
5.0
http://nhw.livejournal.com/1077932.html
Well, I've done it: finished the final volume of the Penguin set of À la recherche du temps perdu, a year and a half after starting them. Like the previous one, I found the last volume very lucid and involving; I wonder if this is really the case, or just reflects my increasing comfort level with Proust's prose? It's quite a break with the previous volumes in some ways, chronicling the effects of the 1914-18 war on France, on Paris, on the places the narrator loves and on his social circle; then an accidental encounter with a gay brothel; then a fifty-page reflection on memory while the narrator walks upstairs from the courtyard to the Guermantes' party; then further meditations on age, on death, on what has happened in the previous volumes and on what drives the narrator to write it all down and turn it into a book. It is very satisfying, and now I want to go back and read it all again (though I may read the Alain de Botton book first).
Bechdel test: as hinted previously, I am inclined to give this volume (like others in the series) a passing grade. Even though it is told entirely from the male narrator's point of view, there are numerous coversations between women characters reported, observed or imagined; and in this volume they talk about death and each other at least as much as about men. (He doesn't know what the Duchess is discussing with Rachel when he sees them talking on page 300, but from the context it is probably poetry despite their mutual links with Robert de Saint-Loup.) Given the admitted influence of Proust on Alison Bechdel, it is just as well that he passes her test. I imagine she would be prepared to stretch a point for him if necessary.
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3142082.html
I agree with my earlier self that the last volume is very approachable - we still have endless parties, but the author has grown up and is working through what this means for life, and the closing pages are very reflexive indeed. Given this year's cenetenary commemorations, it's interesting to note how the first world war happens here as a change of background rather than a series of events (the death of Saint-Loup perhaps being the only specific war incident reported).
But now that I'm a bit more familiar with the great modernists than I was ten years ago, I am struck by the extent to which À la recherche du temps perdu is a diversion rather than a foundation for what came after (or at least what I have read of what came after). I'm glad to have read it (twice), but I don't think I'll do this again.
Well, I've done it: finished the final volume of the Penguin set of À la recherche du temps perdu, a year and a half after starting them. Like the previous one, I found the last volume very lucid and involving; I wonder if this is really the case, or just reflects my increasing comfort level with Proust's prose? It's quite a break with the previous volumes in some ways, chronicling the effects of the 1914-18 war on France, on Paris, on the places the narrator loves and on his social circle; then an accidental encounter with a gay brothel; then a fifty-page reflection on memory while the narrator walks upstairs from the courtyard to the Guermantes' party; then further meditations on age, on death, on what has happened in the previous volumes and on what drives the narrator to write it all down and turn it into a book. It is very satisfying, and now I want to go back and read it all again (though I may read the Alain de Botton book first).
Bechdel test: as hinted previously, I am inclined to give this volume (like others in the series) a passing grade. Even though it is told entirely from the male narrator's point of view, there are numerous coversations between women characters reported, observed or imagined; and in this volume they talk about death and each other at least as much as about men. (He doesn't know what the Duchess is discussing with Rachel when he sees them talking on page 300, but from the context it is probably poetry despite their mutual links with Robert de Saint-Loup.) Given the admitted influence of Proust on Alison Bechdel, it is just as well that he passes her test. I imagine she would be prepared to stretch a point for him if necessary.
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3142082.html
I agree with my earlier self that the last volume is very approachable - we still have endless parties, but the author has grown up and is working through what this means for life, and the closing pages are very reflexive indeed. Given this year's cenetenary commemorations, it's interesting to note how the first world war happens here as a change of background rather than a series of events (the death of Saint-Loup perhaps being the only specific war incident reported).
But now that I'm a bit more familiar with the great modernists than I was ten years ago, I am struck by the extent to which À la recherche du temps perdu is a diversion rather than a foundation for what came after (or at least what I have read of what came after). I'm glad to have read it (twice), but I don't think I'll do this again.
whats_margaret_reading's review against another edition
5.0
Time Regained finishes up In Search of Lost Time, and it's an incredible power house description of and reflection on memory. Our narrator is in war-time Paris, and things have changed. Gone are the usual landscapes and usual social maneuvering (though there is of course still some because it's Paris high society), but the Narrator's memories and Françoise still remain.
Enough time has passed that what used to be the social norm is gone, and the fashionable set have even mostly forgotten Swann, with not insignificant help from both his widow and daughter marrying and erasing his surname. Time, not only bringing bombs and Germans to France, is also erasing the past history of the Narrator's world.
Time has even altered Mme de Guermantes and the pursuit of intellect, literature, and art that has motivated the Narrator since the beginning has spread to her as well. The Narrator has trouble recognizing Saint-Loup's old flame, Rachel, when she finally reappears, having completely reinvented herself since she was a girl in a brothel to a well respected actress. People have changed dramatically, and the Narrator is somehow having to keep up with all of this in addition to somewhat hinted ill health.
Well, the joke is on the Narrator: not all men must accept that in a hundred years their books will be gone, since on hundred years since the first publication of Swann's Way, we are still reading his work. All the work that Françoise has put into fixing up the Narrator's manuscript has paid off because this contemplation of memory, change, and the past still is in print and still is incredibly powerful and poignant.
There have been a lot of small bumps along the way, including more than a little worry about social standing and Albertine's sexual orientation, but Time Regained is worth it all. As creeped out as I was by the Narrator's obsession with Albertine, I feel the same connection to the Narrator's entire feeling of time moving on while memories remain the same. 4,000 pages later, having finished Time Regained was not just an accomplishment but also a wonderful conclusion to reading In Search of Lost Time.
And indeed this ignorance of people's true social position which every ten years causes the new fashionable elect to arise in all the glory of the moment as though the past had never existed, which makes it impossible for an American woman just landed in Europe to see that in an age when Bloch was nobody M. de Charlus was socially supreme in Paris and that Swann, who put himself out to please M. Bontemps, had himself been treated with every mark of friendship by the Prince of Wales, this ignorance, which exists not only in new arrivals but also in those who have always frequented adjacent but distinct regions of society, is itself also invariably an effect--but an effect operative not so much upon a whole social stratum as within individuals--of Time. (403)
Enough time has passed that what used to be the social norm is gone, and the fashionable set have even mostly forgotten Swann, with not insignificant help from both his widow and daughter marrying and erasing his surname. Time, not only bringing bombs and Germans to France, is also erasing the past history of the Narrator's world.
As her life drew to its close, Mme de Guermantes had felt the quickening within her of new curiosities....Her tired mind required a new form of food, and in order to get to know theatrical and literary people she now made herself pleasant to women whom formerly she would have refused to exchange cards but who, in the hope of getting the Duchess to come to their parties, could boast to her of their great friendship with the editor of some review. (465)
Time has even altered Mme de Guermantes and the pursuit of intellect, literature, and art that has motivated the Narrator since the beginning has spread to her as well. The Narrator has trouble recognizing Saint-Loup's old flame, Rachel, when she finally reappears, having completely reinvented herself since she was a girl in a brothel to a well respected actress. People have changed dramatically, and the Narrator is somehow having to keep up with all of this in addition to somewhat hinted ill health.
No doubt my books too, like my fleshy being, would in the end one day die. But death is a thing that we must resign ourselves to. We accept the thought that in ten years we ourselves, in a hundred years our books, will have ceased to exist. Eternal duration is promised no more to men's works than to men. (524)
Well, the joke is on the Narrator: not all men must accept that in a hundred years their books will be gone, since on hundred years since the first publication of Swann's Way, we are still reading his work. All the work that Françoise has put into fixing up the Narrator's manuscript has paid off because this contemplation of memory, change, and the past still is in print and still is incredibly powerful and poignant.
There have been a lot of small bumps along the way, including more than a little worry about social standing and Albertine's sexual orientation, but Time Regained is worth it all. As creeped out as I was by the Narrator's obsession with Albertine, I feel the same connection to the Narrator's entire feeling of time moving on while memories remain the same. 4,000 pages later, having finished Time Regained was not just an accomplishment but also a wonderful conclusion to reading In Search of Lost Time.
omnibozo22's review against another edition
3.0
Whew. Done. Finally.
Marcel finally sets himself down to die, but not before he actually revisits the remaining fogies that still infest Paris. He rehashes past gossip and regrets a few past stupidities. He looks back over the nonevents that made up most of his life and provided the material for his scribblings.
The work in total clearly influenced Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time series, which did much the same in a more entertaining style, for British society of approximately the same time, in the early volumes.
I'm unlikely to reread any of Lost Time, but if I did, I'd want to significantly bone up my ancient high school French and attempt it in the original.
Marcel finally sets himself down to die, but not before he actually revisits the remaining fogies that still infest Paris. He rehashes past gossip and regrets a few past stupidities. He looks back over the nonevents that made up most of his life and provided the material for his scribblings.
The work in total clearly influenced Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time series, which did much the same in a more entertaining style, for British society of approximately the same time, in the early volumes.
I'm unlikely to reread any of Lost Time, but if I did, I'd want to significantly bone up my ancient high school French and attempt it in the original.
jetjaguar124's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
An incredible ending to this titanic work of modernist literature. It's a shame that the first entry, Swan's Way, so completely dominates discussion of this larger work, as the later stories, especially this last one, each have something so special and valuable inside of them.