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A review by nwhyte
In Search of Lost Time, Volume 6: Finding Time Again by Marcel Proust
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.