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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
La obra más peligrosa para cualquiera que quiera escribir a lo largo de su vida, porque como dijo Virginia Woolf, “My great adventure is really Proust. Well, what remains to be written after that?”
It's taken just over four years for me to read the first three books of Proust's magnum opus (i.e. get about halfway). Perhaps one of the few silver linings of Covid 2020 has been that it gave me the opportunity to really sink my teeth into this sprawling novel.
I should say up front that I found this a challenging book to read, mainly because it requires such extreme concentration. You have to sit down and properly devote yourself to reading Proust without any distractions for extended periods of time. There are no easily digestible chapters and very few obvious places to stop. The sentences often meander into four or five subordinate clauses, sometimes extending over a few pages of tightly packed words; these sentences are so superficially innocuous, so smoothly readable and without any obvious difficulty, that even a small slip of focus can mean you end up a few pages later having taken in absolutely nothing. If you were reading Beckett or Nabokov or Pynchon, you would be drawn up short by jarring absurdity or lexical complexity or a bizarre occurrence, but almost everything in Proust is such smooth sailing that it facilitates automatic reading, to the extent that the words drift in at your eyes and out the back of your head.
When I got used to the style and really settled in, however, I began to appreciate how the seemingly elegant sentences are actually more like armed invaders, battering ferociously at the gates of the mind, hoping by sheer numbers to force open its secrets. Proust may not be precise in the sense that he tries to distil what he wants to say into a single perfect sentence, but he is precise in that he is determined to pinpoint exactly what lies behind an emotion or an attitude or a memory, no matter the number of sentences it takes.
I realise I've babbled on about the stylistic elements while ignoring what actually happens in the book (or, rather, the first three volumes). Essentially, a mawkish child grows into a neurotic man-child who engages in predatory behaviour towards women he is sexually attracted to while weeping if his beloved grandmother does not say goodnight to him. Okay, so I'm being a bit cruel and reductive, but the narrator is fairly unsympathetic; what makes him worthwhile is his hypersensitivity, which enables him to deliver detailed, forensic examinations of the way humans feel and why; the contradictions inherent in perception, memory and just general living.
Everything takes place in upper-crust French society at the beginning of the 20th century. This makes the novel not only a fascinating historical curio, but also allows Proust to make one of the most poignant arguments ever made against elitism: the author (as an upper class insider himself) is so expert at pointing out all the contradictions and absurdities of manners and social mores, contrasting the fashionable set with the respectable set with the intellectual set. People snipe at one another for misuse of grammar, outmoded expressions, aesthetic opinions, political standpoints - essentially all the things that cause people to screech at one another on Twitter today, but involving princes, duchesses and other fashionable members of the aristocracy (though who is fashionable and who is not is, of course, debated by the people that inhabit this gilded world). The fact that the society is so rarified may seem to make Proust's points seem rather distant, but actually most (if not all) of the disconnect between meaning and speech, pretence and ingenuousness, is entirely relatable.
There are also innumerable cultural references, ranging from Victor Hugo to Ingres, Napoleonic generals to ladies of letters. The way these are collected and synthesised to provide fresh food for thought reminded me a bit of Montaigne. It's a formidable amount of knowledge that the characters sling about with ease, and you could spend ages delving into the real-world personages upon which many of the novel's characters are based in this roman-a-clef.
As I said at the start, it's taken just over four years for me to read the first three books of Proust's magnum opus, and while I've found it immensely stimulating, I think I'll save the final four books for another decade. After all, you can have too much of a good thing!
I should say up front that I found this a challenging book to read, mainly because it requires such extreme concentration. You have to sit down and properly devote yourself to reading Proust without any distractions for extended periods of time. There are no easily digestible chapters and very few obvious places to stop. The sentences often meander into four or five subordinate clauses, sometimes extending over a few pages of tightly packed words; these sentences are so superficially innocuous, so smoothly readable and without any obvious difficulty, that even a small slip of focus can mean you end up a few pages later having taken in absolutely nothing. If you were reading Beckett or Nabokov or Pynchon, you would be drawn up short by jarring absurdity or lexical complexity or a bizarre occurrence, but almost everything in Proust is such smooth sailing that it facilitates automatic reading, to the extent that the words drift in at your eyes and out the back of your head.
When I got used to the style and really settled in, however, I began to appreciate how the seemingly elegant sentences are actually more like armed invaders, battering ferociously at the gates of the mind, hoping by sheer numbers to force open its secrets. Proust may not be precise in the sense that he tries to distil what he wants to say into a single perfect sentence, but he is precise in that he is determined to pinpoint exactly what lies behind an emotion or an attitude or a memory, no matter the number of sentences it takes.
I realise I've babbled on about the stylistic elements while ignoring what actually happens in the book (or, rather, the first three volumes). Essentially, a mawkish child grows into a neurotic man-child who engages in predatory behaviour towards women he is sexually attracted to while weeping if his beloved grandmother does not say goodnight to him. Okay, so I'm being a bit cruel and reductive, but the narrator is fairly unsympathetic; what makes him worthwhile is his hypersensitivity, which enables him to deliver detailed, forensic examinations of the way humans feel and why; the contradictions inherent in perception, memory and just general living.
Everything takes place in upper-crust French society at the beginning of the 20th century. This makes the novel not only a fascinating historical curio, but also allows Proust to make one of the most poignant arguments ever made against elitism: the author (as an upper class insider himself) is so expert at pointing out all the contradictions and absurdities of manners and social mores, contrasting the fashionable set with the respectable set with the intellectual set. People snipe at one another for misuse of grammar, outmoded expressions, aesthetic opinions, political standpoints - essentially all the things that cause people to screech at one another on Twitter today, but involving princes, duchesses and other fashionable members of the aristocracy (though who is fashionable and who is not is, of course, debated by the people that inhabit this gilded world). The fact that the society is so rarified may seem to make Proust's points seem rather distant, but actually most (if not all) of the disconnect between meaning and speech, pretence and ingenuousness, is entirely relatable.
There are also innumerable cultural references, ranging from Victor Hugo to Ingres, Napoleonic generals to ladies of letters. The way these are collected and synthesised to provide fresh food for thought reminded me a bit of Montaigne. It's a formidable amount of knowledge that the characters sling about with ease, and you could spend ages delving into the real-world personages upon which many of the novel's characters are based in this roman-a-clef.
As I said at the start, it's taken just over four years for me to read the first three books of Proust's magnum opus, and while I've found it immensely stimulating, I think I'll save the final four books for another decade. After all, you can have too much of a good thing!
Loved this book and the translation but I have to confess what I loved was Swann in Love, the novel about sexual jealousy in the centre of this book. The much praised story that enfolds it, about childhood remembrances, was at times hilarious to me. The hyper-sensitive narrator never met a thing he didn't want to describe in the greatest of detail. When I read four pages about the pleasure of reading, I was chuckling but identifying. When he moved on to considerations of an author's process, I was laughing. When he then concluded with a page about the pleasure of sitting and the great chair he was in, I was howling. The narrator's sweetness and sensitivity was just too much for me, despite how BRILLIANTLY it was written. But, other times, as he got older, this deep desire to describe existence and experience felt profound, even hallucinogenic and meditative. I suspect I'd love the later books as he gets older because the very adult and honest Swann in Love was fantastic and something I'd love more of. If Davis does the next novel I'd definitely choose her translation.
Nostalgia and run-on sentences.
Recollections of a sad, anxious boy, his memories and accounts of people, often miserable, that he grew up around, scandals that are only scandals due to the attitudes of the time. Very little of the protagonist emerges amongst detailed descriptions of the scenery (nature and architecture), a few books, even place names, aside from his ambition to become a writer and the start of one love affair, which is linked into the large digression regarding the character of Swann, not the narrator, but arguably the protagonist for half the book.
Swann in Love is less a description of that 200 pages and more of a warning. All the ways he looked down on and manipulated Odette, then Odette seemingly turns the tables or Swann buys his own con and it devolvs into toxic Chasing Amy vibes because of her reputation only for her to show up later married to him.
Proust can turn a phrase, whether it's in service of evocative imagery or a scathing insult from a society dame, but there's something overall that's not just whistful in tone but feels actively self-defeating. Not as clear cut as pessimism or cynicism, maybe just depression manifesting? Maybe this is just what it was to be this type of person in this era. I'm not inspired to pick up the next volume, even considering, or perhaps because of, the way this one ended.
⚠️ antisemitism, classism, homophobia
Recollections of a sad, anxious boy, his memories and accounts of people, often miserable, that he grew up around, scandals that are only scandals due to the attitudes of the time. Very little of the protagonist emerges amongst detailed descriptions of the scenery (nature and architecture), a few books, even place names, aside from his ambition to become a writer and the start of one love affair, which is linked into the large digression regarding the character of Swann, not the narrator, but arguably the protagonist for half the book.
Swann in Love is less a description of that 200 pages and more of a warning. All the ways he looked down on and manipulated Odette, then Odette seemingly turns the tables or Swann buys his own con and it devolvs into toxic Chasing Amy vibes because of her reputation only for her to show up later married to him.
Proust can turn a phrase, whether it's in service of evocative imagery or a scathing insult from a society dame, but there's something overall that's not just whistful in tone but feels actively self-defeating. Not as clear cut as pessimism or cynicism, maybe just depression manifesting? Maybe this is just what it was to be this type of person in this era. I'm not inspired to pick up the next volume, even considering, or perhaps because of, the way this one ended.
⚠️ antisemitism, classism, homophobia
I had a lot of expectations when I began this book. Mostly cliches based on French pretentiousness. I fear it would be wanky intellectual frippery. But it isn't. It is, genuinely, rather beautiful and moving. Yes, it is on occasion 'densely' written but there are also moments where it is written with a lightness of touch and a degree of wit that wouldn't go amiss in a P.G. Wodehouse novel.
The famous 'Madeline' moment is a wonderful illustration of how one small thing can snowball into a series of memories. But isn't it the tea that actually sets off this. Not the Madeline? Or, at least, a combination of the two. Perhaps I'm being awfully British about the importance of tea.
It's a book that feels like the autopsy of human emotion. There's nothing left unrevealed about human nature. Swann's feelings about Odette twist and turn. His over-analysis of her every phrase and action seems real to me and is then reflected in the narrator's feelings for Gilberte in the final part of this volume.
He's also great on the impact that a writer or an artist has on people.
I don't think I can really do it justice in a short review but although it does seem like a mountain to climb, especially at the beginning I think it is a climb worth undertaking.
The famous 'Madeline' moment is a wonderful illustration of how one small thing can snowball into a series of memories. But isn't it the tea that actually sets off this. Not the Madeline? Or, at least, a combination of the two. Perhaps I'm being awfully British about the importance of tea.
It's a book that feels like the autopsy of human emotion. There's nothing left unrevealed about human nature. Swann's feelings about Odette twist and turn. His over-analysis of her every phrase and action seems real to me and is then reflected in the narrator's feelings for Gilberte in the final part of this volume.
He's also great on the impact that a writer or an artist has on people.
I don't think I can really do it justice in a short review but although it does seem like a mountain to climb, especially at the beginning I think it is a climb worth undertaking.
challenging
slow-paced
This first volume of Remembrance of Things Past was not sufficiently compelling to motivate me to read any further volumes of Proust’s magnum opus. Proust’s prose is often unquestionably beautiful and poetic, but it is also labyrinthine in the worst ways: paragraphs that run for pages describing nothing more interesting than a stroll through the countryside; long sentences with multiple relative clauses, appositive phrases, subordinate clauses, and parenthetical asides such that the very convoluted structure of the the sentence renders the sentence almost unintelligible without re-reading it.
And what do we get for the Herculean effort of wading through a morass of viscous language? We get the narrator’s psychological self-analysis of his early childhood and Swann’s tiresome obsession with Odette—hundreds of pages of Swann’s stalkerish ponderings and wonderings about where Odette is and what she is doing and thinking and whether he is present in her thoughts and what he might be able to do to meet with her without her becoming annoyed with him. It’s all so very trivial while being a chore to read.
There is no plot here, no story—just fragments and descriptions of the lives of the narrator, his family, and Swann. This is not a novel so much as an exquisitely detailed (though partially fictionalized) journal. It is not an enjoyable read except for rare passages of brilliance, and it is due to these rare passages that I have rated this volume three stars instead of two.
This may be one of the masterpieces of world literature, and it indeed often showcases beautiful and stunning writing, but it is not for me.
And what do we get for the Herculean effort of wading through a morass of viscous language? We get the narrator’s psychological self-analysis of his early childhood and Swann’s tiresome obsession with Odette—hundreds of pages of Swann’s stalkerish ponderings and wonderings about where Odette is and what she is doing and thinking and whether he is present in her thoughts and what he might be able to do to meet with her without her becoming annoyed with him. It’s all so very trivial while being a chore to read.
There is no plot here, no story—just fragments and descriptions of the lives of the narrator, his family, and Swann. This is not a novel so much as an exquisitely detailed (though partially fictionalized) journal. It is not an enjoyable read except for rare passages of brilliance, and it is due to these rare passages that I have rated this volume three stars instead of two.
This may be one of the masterpieces of world literature, and it indeed often showcases beautiful and stunning writing, but it is not for me.
*slaps the hood of Proust's sentences*
this baby can hold so many clauses
this baby can hold so many clauses