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Swann's Way & Within A Budding Grove

by Marcel Proust

Other authors: See the other authors section.

Series: In Search of Lost Time (1-2)

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1,4681912,312 (4.41)88
On the eve of his marriage, the Counselor makes a risky decision to dealve into the cocaine trade along the Texas-Mexico border. His hope is that this one-time deal will set him and his fiancée on a path to financial freedom, but instead he ends up in a brutal game that threatens to destroy everything and everyone he loves.… (more)
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» See also 88 mentions

English (18)  Spanish (1)  All languages (19)
Showing 1-5 of 18 (next | show all)
Nope, nah, uh uh, no. I'm sorry, but I just can't get my head around high Modernism. I have tried Woolf, Joyce and now Proust and they have all left me feeling bored and uninterested. There's something about an entirely internal book that I just don't get. Surely what's interesting about fiction is that it can be about both what's inside us and the world around us?

In retrospect, this book was especially unlikely to appeal to me, as it is French and I have had my struggles with French literature in the past (apart from [b:Les Miserables|36377471|Les Miserables|Victor Hugo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1509394980l/36377471._SY75_.jpg|3208463], which I remember enjoying).

It's also very hard to read. The numerous, and seemingly endless, run- , or even ramble-, on sentences just make it hard to read. I often found a verb following a comma and had to comb back through the sentence to figure out what it referred to. That's annoying, but to make it worse, I mostly wished I hadn't bothered. There certainly wasn't enough profundity to justify all that obfuscation and complexity, although the book was occasionally quite funny. But I just couldn't find the right way to read it. I tried powering through and not minding if I missed some of the nuance, but that made it boring. So I slowed right down and carefully read every sentence so I could appreciate it as it arrived. But that was also boring.

In fact, on reflection, I think high Modernism might represent the limits of my tolerance for experimental fiction. I have never had much time for books like [b:Gravity's Rainbow|415|Gravity's Rainbow|Thomas Pynchon|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1657594227l/415._SY75_.jpg|866393], so I guess I'm quite traditional when it comes to novels.

Anyway, just in case I want to pick it up again in the future, I'll have to remember that I got up the bit where the narrator had another feeling. ( )
  robfwalter | Jul 31, 2023 |
paperback
  SueJBeard | Feb 14, 2023 |
Not done yet, but this is awesome writing. ( )
  burritapal | Oct 23, 2022 |
Hard to explain why Proust is so mesmerizing, as he drills down deeper into every way our minds consider every experience, place, person. Amazingly, the longer and more protracted it gets, the more you get drawn in. I can already foresee the day that I finish the final volume, and wish there were more. ( )
  oatleyr | Aug 22, 2020 |
The smell of varnish, or the taste of a madeleine tea-cake, Mama's kiss at bedtime: each holds within it pages of memories for the narrator. I read some in French in a room where both the poet Elizabeth Bishop and the novelist Mary McCarthy stayed, including the hostess in her The Group. While not a spoiler, Bishop's sexuality changes Odette for Swan late in the novel.
Proust illustrates Plato: I used to say in Humanities surveys how the Real Chair is the Chair in the mind...others fall apart, spindles and seat. Proust returns every couple pages to his Platonism early on, "Even the simple act of 'seeing someone we know', is, to some extent, an intellectual process"(25).
Swann objects to journalism, with its "fresh trivialities...Suppose that every morning we tore the wrapper off our paper with fevered hands, and we were to find inside--oh! I don't know, say Pascal's Pensées?"(35).
The real in the mind sometimes fades, "He could not explore the idea further, for a sudden access of that mental lethargy which was, with him, congenital, intermittent, and providential--happened, at that moment, to extinguish every particle of light in his brain, as instantaneously as in a later period with electric lighting, it became possible to cut off the supply of light by fingering a switch"(386).

I'm not sure the same mental permanence can be said for Americans with our Cheerios of chilldhood, our memories of new car smell. And our newspapers, our TV fresh trivialities. Maybe.
Proust evokes the sensibility--with an emphasis on "senses"--, he evokes the richness of the mind in a new way. The senses lock on memories tied to sight and sound, such as early songs--for me, some late 50s Rock and Roll, Little Richard, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino. Most everybody can recall when they heard a specific song, "Oh, Don-an-na," or "I found my thrill/ On Blueberry Hil...."

An aside, how much this may lose to be classed as "gay lit," though the author was certainly gay.

Read in Modern Library hardback, 1956. I have not read volume II. ( )
  AlanWPowers | Feb 16, 2020 |
Showing 1-5 of 18 (next | show all)
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» Add other authors (43 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Marcel Proustprimary authorall editionscalculated
Anguissola Beretta, AlbertoContributorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bo, CarloForewordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
De Maria, LucianoEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Galateria, DariaContributorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Raboni, GiovanniTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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On the eve of his marriage, the Counselor makes a risky decision to dealve into the cocaine trade along the Texas-Mexico border. His hope is that this one-time deal will set him and his fiancée on a path to financial freedom, but instead he ends up in a brutal game that threatens to destroy everything and everyone he loves.

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