In Search of Lost Time

Proust 6-pack (Proust Complete)

Paperback

English language

Published June 3, 2003 by Modern Library.

ISBN:
978-0-8129-6964-1
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4 stars (44 reviews)

Monty Python paid hommage to Proust's novel in a sketch first broadcast on November 16th, 1972, called The All-England Summarize Proust Competition. The winner was the contestant who could best summarize A la recherche du temps perdu in fifteen seconds, "once in a swimsuit and once in evening dress."

63 editions

reviewed Swann's Way by Lydia Davis (In Search of Lost Time, #1)

Review of "Swann's Way" on 'Goodreads'

No rating

I cannot bring myself to rate this book.

It's like a saying I read somewhere - Proust is for life - which I think I'm able to understand now. The term "Proustian" had such an enigmatic character to itself for me, much like the word "Kafkaesque" would be for people who haven't read Kafka, that the more and more I encountered it, more and more I became intrigued and perhaps a bit afraid as well of getting disillusioned when I finally do make its acquaintance. There were a lot of moments in the book where I questioned why exactly was I reading it, followed by an intense love for the sheer pages in front of me, and sometimes ending with an indifference to an entire chapter. This ebb and flow of emotions continued throughout the book, and I'm afraid in the end, it still remains an enigma for me.

Proust …

Review of "Swann's way" on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

It wasn't a total wash. I had to push through to the end, but it wasn't as if I was picking up the book with dread or putting it off.

The book is very boring. There are some beautiful moments of introspection, but there are pages and pages, sentences and sentences of rather dull introspection that weigh everything down. It's relentlessly descriptive. I think this was the style of the time. It reminded me of Henry James, who I found similarly dense and long winded but more interesting (in Portrait of a Lady at least). The parts in Combray were the most difficult whereas reading about Swann was mostly tolerable until the latter part of his section - then he became, in the language of the Verdurins, a bore.

I suspect part of the difficulty is the translation, as I often do when reading anything in translation. I believe the …

reviewed Swann's Way by Lydia Davis (In Search of Lost Time, #1)

Review of "Swann's Way" on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I don't know what I'm supposed to get from Proust - I failed to read that book a few years ago - but here's how it damaged me:

Well, scrap that colon, too. I can't share it. I've just written my longest review and deleted it for being a bit way too personal.

I've been using books to fill spaces that shouldn't be filled, smothering an internal monologue that needs to have its say. It's time for a break.

Review of 'In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7]' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I've been putting off reading Rememberance of Things Past for, um, 33 years. My neighbor in my dorm in college, who was magnificent, and who now, curiously, is a corporate takeover artist in the City of London, said that Proust was the. Greatest. Novelist. Ever. Such words from SL I took seriously. Anyway. It is odd that this is marketed with the title In Search of Lost Time As far as I can tell it is C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation, and therefor should probably be called "Remembrance of Things Past." (The book racket is not scholarly; it is about marketing books.) Anyway, this seems to be an competent, and sometimes beautiful, translation. I think I detect Moncrieff's Scottish cadences, perhaps; I think this is a good thing. It is also really cheap, and the Kindlization is better than acceptable. The other point is that Proust is perhaps at his …

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