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sherbertwells's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
relaxing
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
“Ten times over I must essay the task, must lean down over the abyss. And each time the natural laziness which deters us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance, has urged me to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and think merely of the worries of tomorrow, which let themselves be pondered over without effort or distress of mind. And suddenly the memory returns” (47)
Welcome back, fellow readers, to the season of the long-form review! I’ve chosen to celebrate this return to form by reviewing a book so gigantic it has to be published in seven volumes: In Search of Lost Time.
The only problem is that I might have read it wrong.
Many people (or at least a handful of influential academics) say that Proust’s masterpiece is best read at a rate of 10 pages a day. If that is the case, then perhaps my decision to read the first half of Swann’s Way, the first book in the series on an overnight plane ride was not what the author intended. How could the steeple of Combray be visible thousands of miles above a dark, spinning earth? How could I envision the silhouette of a stranger’s bedroom when I was leaving my own—a twin pushed up against the window of the family library—possibly forever? Furthermore, was I too young to read Proust in the first place?
I was certainly old enough to feel nostalgia. As North America darkened and slipped away beneath me, the cabin transformed into a shadowy fin-de-siecle bedchamber. I explored the boundaries of a florid cage and got to know the genteel, anonymous narrator trapped within. I especially enjoyed Proust’s brief character sketches, like that of the woman who cannot appreciate Chopin because she is afraid of a candle sitting on the piano:
“At last she could contain herself no longer, and, running up the two steps of the platform on which the piano stood, flung herself on the candle to adjust its sconce. But scarcely had her hand come within reach of it when, on a final chord, the piece finished, and the pianist rose to his feet. Nevertheless the bold initiative shewn by this young woman and the moment of blushing confusion between her and the pianist which resulted from it, produced an impression that was favorable on the whole” (349)
If only the title character was that interesting.
I’m so sorry. I cannot stand Charles Swann, a Parisian dandy whose ill-fated amour occupies more than half of the first volume. I don’t think Proust intended for him to be a hero, or even a particularly nice person, but according to Justin O’Brien’s introduction he is an author avatar “almost to the same degree that the narrator is” (xi). If this is true, shouldn’t he be at least a little relatable, or charmingly flawed?
Neither his possessive love for the courtesan Odette de Crécy nor his insistence upon objective aesthetic hierarchies make for a particularly sympathetic protagonist. I don’t want to spend 200 pages with this man. I don’t even want to spend five minutes in the same room with him; he would probably identify and proposition me in the first minute and spend the next four quietly implying my taste was inferior to his. The only people who might find him likeable are the literary snobs who rejected the publication of Swann’s Way in the first place.
“He told himself that, in choosing the thought of Odette as the inspiration of his dreams of ideal happiness, he was not, as he had until then supposed, falling back, merely, upon an expedient of doubtful and certainly inadequate value, since she contained in herself what satisfied the utmost refinement of his taste in art. He failed to observe that this quality would not naturally avail to bring Odette into the category of women whom he found desirable, simply because his desires had always run counter to his aesthetic taste” (232)
I love books like The Remains of the Day and An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, whose main characters cannot conquer their limited perspectives. I think Proust is a genius and a powerful philosopher: he almost convinced me that material objects were a valid repository for human experience! But I could not give less of a damn whether or not Odette de Crécy has actually sinned with a woman, and no amount of waxing philosophical will make me care about it.
I cannot help but blame myself for this “misreading.” Like Swann, I am possessive of my favorites, and become sick when they disappoint me. And while I can’t say I love Swann’s Way, I don’t think I’ll ever be cured of it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Emotional abuse
Minor: Sexual content and Antisemitism
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