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steven_nobody's review against another edition
3.0
I'm thinking reading Proust is like being trapped inside the mind of a fin-de-siecle autistic gay man. It's fascinating, obsessive, and (lately) so boring. These books have come down, down, down in enjoyment.
serendipitysbooks's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Classism, and Lesbophobia
cs4_0reads's review
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
david_rhee's review against another edition
4.0
In Proust's 6th installment of Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel loses his grip on his captive Albertine just as the title suggests. Revealing anything more would qualify as a spoiler which one would be wise to avoid in a 6th volume of a 3000 page novel. The plot has two sharp turns, one which shapes most of the present volume and the other which I would guess is to be developed in the 7th and final volume.
The reader is once again treated to gliding and flowing reflections on memory, jealousy, love as it is affected by absence and the passage of time, and a few interesting takes on the different versions of the self which arise from a dynamic personality as it is forged by experience. The end of the volume catches the reader up on the marriages of the upcoming generation which promise a profound wave of change in the aristocracy.
The reader is once again treated to gliding and flowing reflections on memory, jealousy, love as it is affected by absence and the passage of time, and a few interesting takes on the different versions of the self which arise from a dynamic personality as it is forged by experience. The end of the volume catches the reader up on the marriages of the upcoming generation which promise a profound wave of change in the aristocracy.
braxwall's review against another edition
3.0
Denna den sjätte boken har i vissa utgåvor slagits samman med den föregående vilket jag nu förstår. I princip hela berättelsen kretsar kring berättarens förlorade relation till Albertine. Detta är den svagaste boken hittills och känns som en transportsträcka som pendlar mellan sorg och svartsjuka samt den egna perceptionens bedräglighet över tid; precis på samma sätt som rummet har sin geometri har tiden sin psykologi.
likecymbeline's review against another edition
This was the volume that came closest to being what I thought Proust would be. There was a whole stretch of pages where the words seemed to float and blend and turn into not just print on a page but some sort of gestalt. What I liked here, what I love anywhere, is that the narrator briefly realises the unknowability of a lover. It recalled to me one of my favourite passages from A Lover's Discourse:
Of course, I say this with the caveat that the narrator is the most obtuse and conceited and solipsistic little such-and-such so it takes a lot for him to get to a place where he actually strikes me as attaining a fair and transcendent line of thought. And it's not like he stays there. He rapidly returns to being extremely annoying.
I'll also say that this one flew by and I'm ready to dive into Time Regained and have this unreasonable masochism out of the way. I told somebody today that I haven't been happy since I started these books in June and I was only half joking.
“I am caught in this contradiction: on the one hand, I believe I know the other better than anyone and triumphantly assert my knowledge to the other ("I know you—I'm the only one who really knows you!"); and on the other hand, I am often struck by the obvious fact that the other is impenetrable, intractable, not to be found; I cannot open up the other, trace back the other's origins, solve the riddle. Where does the other come from? Who is the other? I wear myself out, I shall never know.”
Of course, I say this with the caveat that the narrator is the most obtuse and conceited and solipsistic little such-and-such so it takes a lot for him to get to a place where he actually strikes me as attaining a fair and transcendent line of thought. And it's not like he stays there. He rapidly returns to being extremely annoying.
I'll also say that this one flew by and I'm ready to dive into Time Regained and have this unreasonable masochism out of the way. I told somebody today that I haven't been happy since I started these books in June and I was only half joking.
duffypratt's review against another edition
4.0
This series definitely counts as the longest reading effort where I have persisted (if sporadically). I first read Proust during the summer of my freshman year of college, almost 35 years ago. I quickly read the first two books, and then stumbled a bit in the middle of The Guermantes Way but finished all three fairly quickly. I didn't start Cities of the Plain for another three years, and I think it took almost two years to get through it. For some reason, the charm had been wearing off. I didn't pick up the first Albertine book for at least five years after that, and I read it in spurts over the course of another few years. Then maybe ten years passed before picking up this book, and about as long to finish it.
It's not like I read consistently over all those years. I would pick up the book I was on, generally before a trip somewhere, read 20 or 30 pages, and be awestruck at how brilliant it was, and just as dumbfounded at how unengaging I was finding it, despite the brilliance. Then I would get distracted by something less good, but with more forward pull. And that would be fine with me, because I more and more started to feel like this was a book that I could set down for any amount of time, and it would be pretty much the same when I returned. That's partially because the ratio of incidents to meditiations is so low.
During that time, I've probably read Swann in Love three or four times, including in the original. I also have planned on re-reading the second book in the original because I found it so charming the first time. I actually took intensive French in college largely because I wanted to be able to read Proust. And I still like the idea of doing that re-reading, though I doubt it will ever happen.
That brings me to this book, and my problems with it. At the start, I found these books filled with charm, wit, and extraordinarily keen observation. The narrator has a habit of using the second person in his reflections -- of saying what "we" generally do or don't do. And at the start, I was right with him. I identified with him so much, and of course, I have to admit that I was flattered with his use of we. It made me a part of his company, and lets face it, he's much much smarter than I.
But by this book, I found the "we" grating. I look at the narrator mostly in two lights after this book. On the one hand, he seems a hypersensitive whiner with solipsistic tendencies. The world has chafed his sensibilities, and as such he has preferred to withdraw from the world, embrace his solipsism, and to substitute another world, constructed of memories, for the real one. That's the good aspect. On the bad side, I think the narrator is basically a monster, but a monster who is so detached from the world that he manages to do very little harm. What happened to poor Marcel that he can't even begin to conceive of Albertine as human? How did this person evolve out of the narrator I loved in A l'Ombre Des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs?
Even so, the brilliance is there. And I thought the entire book redeemed itself with the final conversations with Gilberte. I was just about on the point of giving up on these books (in much the way I was so exasperated with the Guermantes Way until he came up with one of the best endings in all of literature). Here, the ending didn't come as a shock, as it did in The Guermantes way. Rather, it struck me as being both a bit surprising and perfectly fitting. And there, in the last ten pages, all of the charm returned, and I know even less what to make of the whole thing.
Perhaps in another five years or so I will finish Le Temps Retrouve, and then I can begin the project of rereading I had envisioned for myself over thirty years ago.
It's not like I read consistently over all those years. I would pick up the book I was on, generally before a trip somewhere, read 20 or 30 pages, and be awestruck at how brilliant it was, and just as dumbfounded at how unengaging I was finding it, despite the brilliance. Then I would get distracted by something less good, but with more forward pull. And that would be fine with me, because I more and more started to feel like this was a book that I could set down for any amount of time, and it would be pretty much the same when I returned. That's partially because the ratio of incidents to meditiations is so low.
During that time, I've probably read Swann in Love three or four times, including in the original. I also have planned on re-reading the second book in the original because I found it so charming the first time. I actually took intensive French in college largely because I wanted to be able to read Proust. And I still like the idea of doing that re-reading, though I doubt it will ever happen.
That brings me to this book, and my problems with it. At the start, I found these books filled with charm, wit, and extraordinarily keen observation. The narrator has a habit of using the second person in his reflections -- of saying what "we" generally do or don't do. And at the start, I was right with him. I identified with him so much, and of course, I have to admit that I was flattered with his use of we. It made me a part of his company, and lets face it, he's much much smarter than I.
But by this book, I found the "we" grating. I look at the narrator mostly in two lights after this book. On the one hand, he seems a hypersensitive whiner with solipsistic tendencies. The world has chafed his sensibilities, and as such he has preferred to withdraw from the world, embrace his solipsism, and to substitute another world, constructed of memories, for the real one. That's the good aspect. On the bad side, I think the narrator is basically a monster, but a monster who is so detached from the world that he manages to do very little harm. What happened to poor Marcel that he can't even begin to conceive of Albertine as human? How did this person evolve out of the narrator I loved in A l'Ombre Des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs?
Even so, the brilliance is there. And I thought the entire book redeemed itself with the final conversations with Gilberte. I was just about on the point of giving up on these books (in much the way I was so exasperated with the Guermantes Way until he came up with one of the best endings in all of literature). Here, the ending didn't come as a shock, as it did in The Guermantes way. Rather, it struck me as being both a bit surprising and perfectly fitting. And there, in the last ten pages, all of the charm returned, and I know even less what to make of the whole thing.
Perhaps in another five years or so I will finish Le Temps Retrouve, and then I can begin the project of rereading I had envisioned for myself over thirty years ago.