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 very best in a Kindle. I would love to have a paper copy of this in a series of seven or ten little comfy little paperbacks; all the paper editions now are ponderous trade paperbacks that look like a handful. I read this from 3 to 5 in the morning when my sleep was damaged for many enjoyable months. I looked on the internet to keep the characters straight, and used the Oxford Dictionary of English on my Kindle to scope out the occasional truly eccentric bit of vocabulary. I should use this to mention Germaine Greer's completely rotten article about Proust. Before I noticed who had written it, the voice reminded me of William F. Buckley in that late period where he was this senile and rather stupid elder statesman, and would just dash off completely lousy writing. I guess that was where she is in her career, as well.