Swann's Way (1913)

I have a love-hate relationship with this book, or more accurately, a 'occastionally like - often hate' relationship. The prose is lyrical with amazing word selection. Listening to this in audio felt like I was hearing poetry. Much of the story describes Swann falling in love with his mistress who has several affairs with other men. The feelings of jealousy and frustration were so incredibly written and described. But several things drove me absolutely crazy about this book. First, the structure. The sentences are long making it difficult to parse and follow a thought. I read along with this on my Nook and many sentences took more than a screen so that I had to flip back and forth just to capture the entire thought. Much of the story is stream of consciousness musings about memory and the past making it hard to completely grasp. But my biggest complaint is that the two major characters, Swann and the narrator Marcel (Proust as a young boy perhaps?) were over the top as far as expressing their emotions. Marcel, a young boy, is devastated when his mother does not kiss him good night and when he leaves Combray, he weeps over the fact that he won't see the beautiful hawthorns. Swann's angst over his cheating lover was genuine and well described but the emotions associated with it were way too intense. This is only the first book of seven in this very LONG series. I'll definitely wait before picking up the next one. ( )

God I wish I understood French so I could listen to this in the original. It was beautiful in English.

I finally finished this after I made myself avoid other more entertaining books and buckled down for the ride.

Proust is not easy reading, and to this day I'm only marginally aware of what actually happened in this book. That said, there is a plot to it if you can pay attention and make it through the stream-of-consciousness meanderings. The way he plays with words makes it worth the price of entry, mind you; but this is not for plot and action junkies. In fact I'm not even sure you'll care much for the characters. Near as I can tell, it's about a kid remembering a rich guy he knew as a kid, who fell in love with a slutty chick and married her despite not liking her, and then the kid falls for the rich guy's daughter.

The worst part? I kinda miss the style and voice, and feel compelled to keep reading the remaining five books in the series. Help me. ( )

This is a very tough book for me to review since I don't feel like I have gotten the full experience of Proust's writing. After finishing the last page, I knew that this is a book to be read not only once but several times. There are many subtle references and connections I know I missed.

My strategy going in was to read it for the story and not to worry about interpretations or how the writing was constructed. For me, it was easier to read it on my Kindle so that I could highlight a word or phrase and then instantly Google it. Very handy.

I also have to confess that initially I was thinking 'what in the world is the big deal', but once I entered into the world of Swann and Odette I was hooked. The cadence of the story telling is lovely.

One thing is for sure, Proust's influence on writing cannot be underestimated; a great case in point is in the book I am currently reading [b:1Q84|10357575|1Q84 |Haruki Murakami|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1359439026s/10357575.jpg|18160093];the heroine of the book is working her way through Proust's work. Fun to watch someone else having the experience. ( )

After I first read Remembrance of Things Past twelve years ago, I liked to tell people that everything I had ever known or experienced or felt was like a tiny mote of dust in the vast universe of Proust's imagination. For a long time, any new fact or idea would prompt me to say, "That's just like in Proust, when..."

Rereading it now, I don't love Swann's Way the way I did once. At some point, I grew up and out and in a different direction. I'm not so dazzled by the glamour, I'm more disturbed by the ugliness. But there was a time when Proust swallowed me whole, and I still recognize myself in the pages. The mark it left on me was that deep.

But what is Swann's Way? A coming of age story, maybe. It starts when our narrator is a young boy trying to make sense of the adult world. He's observant, sickly, pained by his own powerlessness. His transition into adulthood is interrupted by a synopsis or overture, a foreshadowing of things to come, when the book shifts away from him to the story of Charles Swann's obsessive love for a courtesan, Odette de Crecy.

But like all great books, the story is just the crust for the pie, the plate for the steak. Swann's Way is a book of inversions and perversions. It's a book where every flower and tree is anthropomorphized; every petal is made of silk, every garden a ballroom ("Lilac time was nearly over; a few, still, poured forth in tall mauve chandeliers the delicate bubbles of their flowers"). The built world is so drenched in emotion that every building, chair, and lamp comes alive, as seasonal and mutable as the flowers and trees. The natural and artificial collapse.

Of course, Remembrance of Things Past is a book about memory. Everybody knows that. But it's not just a book where the narrator, as an adult, dips a bit of spongy madeleine cookie into a cup of tea and the taste recalls memories of his youth with a startling, impossible clarity. That does happen, and Swann's Way is explicitly about memory in a lot of ways. But it's a text conjured from memory, every character a "transparent envelope" stuffed with memories, every tree alive, the whole world palpably made of the same stuff, cut from the cloth of the narrator's imagination.

There is no objectivity, ever. Yet the characters suffer when they fail to recognize their own subjectivity. Swann cannot see that his great love for Odette is, for her, a burdensome business arrangement. While Odette, venal, stupid, and coarse as she is, always has a canny sense of what drives other people, and how to get what she wants from them.

It's not a coincidence that a prostitute, for all her faults, sees so clearly. There's an economy, a commerce, of esteem here -- the Swann family's bourgeois respectability has great value in Combray, none in Paris. The Verdurins' clannishness invalidates other forms of social currency, making Swann's most valuable assets -- his aristocratic friends and good taste -- worthless. And Odette, who might otherwise covet the introductions that Swann can make for her, loses interest in all the duchesses and princesses in France when she loses interest in Swann.

I spent a lot of time, as I read, despising the characters and cherishing Proust's psychological insight. The narrator's feeble, anxious need for his mother's kiss is creepy. Swann's possessiveness, which evolves into outright abuse, is horrifying. Odette's shamelessness is awful. Swann's Way is full of brief, vicious character sketches and there aren't many characters to like, at the end of the day.

But even if they can't be liked, they can be understood -- and Proust traces every action, every repellant personality trait, to its source. He shows us how decisions are made, how people can be blind to their own worst faults, how hard it is to see ourselves as others see us, how self-destructive behaviors persist even after we've recognized the harm they do.

It's astonishing that in a book that overflows with gorgeous, glittering imagery, the real subject matter is so base. Our flaws, our failures, our weaknesses. Proust is sympathetic and cruel by turns -- but always thorough. I don't see how anyone could read this book and not come out of it understanding themselves, or other people, a little better. ( )