Sodom and Gomorrah

Confirmo, una vez más, que la gente que dice "voy a leer En busca del tiempo perdido pero solo el primer tomo, a lo sumo el segundo", es tonta. Tonta, tontísima. "Sodoma y gomorra" es por ahora el libro más anécdotico de la saga. Donde Marcel ya consolidado en esa sociedad de infidencias participa de lo más jugoso que puede haber en todo grupo endogámico: el sexo y los chismes.

No soy quién para hacer una lectura sobre la representación tanto de la homosexualidad masculina como de la femenina porque no sé tanto de Proust ni de en quién estaban realmente basados los personajes, lo cual un poco me molesta porque entiendo que hay un enorme subtexto repleto de tela para cortar. Pero "En busca del tiempo perdido" es otro de esos show more ejemplos que refrendan aquello de que "toda generación cree haber inventado todo" y que decir de una obra que era "adelantada a su época" muchas veces es desconocer los vaivenes de la historia.

El tema de "Sodoma y gomorra" es la sexualidad, sí, libre, fluída, con sus secretos a voces. Pero sobre todo es un libro sobre los celos, de los que Marcel adolece al punto de querer dinamitar sus relaciones más significativas. Sobre el final se casa con Albertina porque no le queda otra. Y no le queda otra porque él mismo no podría evitar casarse con ella. No es ya el rayo que lo parte a uno y lo deja estaqueado, del que habla Cortázar con cierta naificidad, sino un acto desesperado de posesión. El próximo volumen se llama "La prisionera". Ya me la veo venir.

¿Y querés que te diga una cosa más? Este volumen me dejó manija. Lo terminé y me quedé pensando. Apenas me levanté esta mañana lo recogí de la mesita de luz, fui hasta la biblioteca de no-leídos, agarré el tomo cinco y lo puse en la mochila. show less

The least engaging volume so far, but (curiously) the quickest read.

In the narrator's close study of homosexuality, a topic Proust was intimately familiar with, the approach is something like Lorne Greene's New Wilderness: an independent observer dispassionately noting the social habits and interactions among the species. It's a sad portrait of a culture forced underground, aware of and sensitive to its own secret signals and signs. The narrator takes a preoccupied standpoint, elaborating on the topic with the same thoroughness and degree of knowledge he has displayed for everything else.

This theme dominates the volume, but I was more attuned to the developing relationship between the narrator and his love Albertine. The narrator's show more degree of intimacy with Albertine caught me off guard and I realized belatedly, it's been going on for some time - possibly back to the third volume - but was stated so politely that I didn't catch on until it became obvious. Similarly the narrator is more in focus and his narration more grounded than in the last volume; now we only hear what he hears, and when he adds extraneous information he explains how he learned it. That enabled me to be a firmer judge of his character. I'll forgive his social snobbishness - that's his passion, after all, and he's good at it - but I'm less forgiving when it's turned on the lower classes despite his belief he's above that, and especially of his attitude toward Albertine whom he expects to keep at his beck and call, never mind that's she says she's happy to do it. He's not above getting whiny about it: "You prefer this lady and her friends to me since ... you prefer to leave me here alone, sick and wretched?" I wanted her to tell him off, and I can't imagine what she sees in him, if it is not merely his money (as he fears.)

The narrator feels an abhorrent degree of jealousy, controlling Albertine in every manner than he can, fantasizing of taking it still further: "I would have endured every possible torment, and if that proved insufficient, would have inflicted torments on her, would have isolated her, kept her under lock and key, would have taken from her the little money that she had so that it should be physically impossible for her to make the journey." And not ten pages earlier he was off-handedly contemplating breaking things off with her, deciding marriage to her would be impossible. He lies outrageously to her multiple times in order to manipulate her, restricts who she can be in the company of and when, and is as liable to be jealous of her in the company of women as of men. There's a measure of self-study about where this stems from - his lack of self-confidence, his uncertainty of her feelings for him, maybe some of his wariness stemming from Swann's story - but there's not nearly the degree of self-castigation over his jealousy that's called for.

Given a few hints that have been dropped, and the reputation of Proust and this work, I have to assume a tragedy is being prepared and this villainy won't go unanswered. Swann conducts a self-assessment of his own jealously which made me wish for a clearer memory of the first volume, since I think he's selling short his capacity. But I appreciated his comment about the uniqueness of one's memory for experience. Even if you can share memories of an experience with someone else, your emotional response to that experience is uniquely your own, and over time you accumulate a collection of these lonely memories of feeling that are unshared by anyone. I also liked the (unrelated) insight about how the young can throw social standing to the wind in a flagrant display of rebellion, but will face a tough uphill battle if they ever wish to restore themselves. show less

Women shall have Gomorrah and men shall have Sodom - Alfred de Vigny, epigram

"[The Sodomites] form in every land an oriental colony, cultured, musical, malicious, which has charming qualities and intolerable defects."

For his next trick, Marcel Proust contrives to up-end much of what has come before, as his narrator goes ever further in search of lost time. (My reviews of the first three volumes can be found: here, here, and - what do you know? - here.) I'd have to say that volume four, Sodome et Gomorrhe (Sodom and Gomorrah, more poetically, but less accurately translated in the past as Cities of the Plain), is the most challenging volume of Proust, and yet as I reached its end, I realised just how vital and thematically intertwined show more this is. As the narrator matures in his 20s, he is at a tipping-point between his youth and naivete, and his growing understanding of the world. There are essentially four sections to the novel:

"People never cease to change place in relation to ourselves."

One. In a brief section, Marcel (let's just agree to call him that, shall we?) decides to spy on a bee fertilising a flower, and instead gets to watch an altogether different kind of pollination, that of his old nemesis, Baron de Charlus, and Francoise's beloved tailor, Jupien. The sequence is cheeky, and heavily coded (to the point where I could imagine an older French reader of the 1920s barely even grasping what has happened) yet virtually obscene. A fascinating reminder of how utterly different the act of reading and writing was 100 years ago. It reminds me of Noel Coward apparently writing many of his straight couples with the intention of them being homosexual couples - if only he had born a generation or two later. This section sets off one of the major analyses of the novel, that of the homosexual and his (her?) relationship to polite society. Proust - himself both gay and part-Jewish - creates distinctly unflattering portraits of both groups, but one senses that some of the writing is tongue-in-cheek. There's no denying that the author is working through some serious issues over his sexuality, but at the same time, his deeply personal comparison of the homosexual to the dispersed Jews suggests that he was ultimately sympathetic. And many of the passages about the so-called "freemasonry" of gays, in which they begin to tell one another out amongst the crowd, still ring true in much of today's society - I can certainly pick examples from my own life that resonate! The anti-Semitism and homophobia (the latter not being anywhere near as virulent) expressed by many of the characters is not expressed by Marcel the narrator, suggesting that this social obsession with difference is not something of which Proust approves. And indeed, as we go on, we begin to realise how closely young Marcel identifies with both Charles Swann (the Jew) and Palamède de Charlus (the homosexual) even though he is neither, suggesting a human connection underneath.

(Proust's meditations on the idea of the homosexual as an "invert", as a "woman", are perhaps more problematic in light of the 94 years that have since passed, but to complain about such is fruitless. If nothing else, the book sheds an interesting light on the many ways gay culture - and views of gay culture - have evolved in a century ... and a few ways in which they have remained steadfastly the same.)

"When you rely on other people, you should try not to be such an idiot." - Madame Verdurin

Two. The return of Madame Verdurin! My favourite Proustian character by a country mile, Madame Verdurin drags her entire "set" kicking and screaming back into the novel, as we begin to see the older generation of characters filtered through Marcel's slightly-less-rose-coloured glasses, as they all spend the summer in and around Balbec. Swann and Robert Saint-Loup are developing and changing, their own personalities deepening and widening, their connection to Marcel strengthening and then fading, as happens to us all. As Proust was writing this novel (which was published in two parts), his health was fading rapidly, and indeed he would die only weeks after the second part was released. In light of this, it's impressive just how dense and funny much of this bulky centrepiece is. Madame Verdurin and all of her guests, interlopers, and rivals are portrayed in microscopic detail, and much of it is hilarious - particularly the deep, and finally seemingly complete, Cambremer vs. Verdurin rivalry, which escalates over essentially nothing! Much is discussed here, and Proust makes very little effort to even pretend like this section is being told from Marcel's point of view, but at the same time ... he does rather go on, doesn't he? Given that The Guermantes Way was almost sickeningly absorbed with salons and dinner parties, I was expecting a more personal experience for Marcel, and instead the narrator all but disappears from vast swathes of the novel. Everything ties back in thematically, and sometimes in surprising ways, such as the long-winded M. Brichot, who holds up the novel for sometimes four full pages discussing the etymology of place names (Mme Verdurin bemans how he likes to "hurl chunks of dictionary at our heads during dinner"), but - just when this is inducing a coma - we realise that Brichot's words are the final nail in the coffin of the narrator's earlier romanticism about such names and, by extension, the places themselves. On the other hand, the self-absorption and rung-climbing of society has been well and truly displaeyd, and one wonders whether we are achieving much more by examining it in yet further detail. It's not that the character drawings are dull or that the situation is lacking in humour and insight; it's just a continuation of what has gone before, with little reason to repeat. (One of my favourite of the many social debates is the different ways of seeing a Princess' social habits. Some think that she is received only alone by a certain guest because that guest is particular special. Others argue that she is only received alone by that guest because she doesn't really want to be seen with them!

But what this section of the novel does, importantly, is thrust Albertine back into the spotlight in a big way.

"It was my fate to pursue only phantoms, creatures whose reality existed to a great extent in my imagination."

Three. Things pick up considerably once Marcel and Albertine are contrasted with - of all people - Baron de Charlus and that dashing, debonair devil, Charles Morel the violinist soldier (I mean, honestly, what a combination). Proust is always at his strongest when analysing the "intermittencies of the heart" (a chapter title here but also apparently a rejected title for the overall novel), and this is no exception. On returning to Balbec, Marcel stands on a cliff top and finds his soul splitting and rejoining - Marcel past, Marcel present, Marcel future - a line of Scrooge's ghosts. Involuntary memory, like that of his grandmother's death, competes with voluntary memories: memories of girls he wants to forget, girls he has forgotten, girls he can never let go of. Marcel desires Albertine, even needs her, although he's still not able to interpret and convey love in the right ways. Is he truly in love with this girl? Is he even really trying to get to know her? I'm not entirely convinced. There are overt shades of the Swann/Odette relationship from Swann's Way, not least when Marcel becomes convinced - apropos of nothing - that Albertine is having, or has had, the old Sapphic scissoring with some of her Balbec girlfriends. But just as the Verdurin set are different in the leafy confines of La Raspeliere (the passage detailing Marcel and Albertine's painfully long journey there one night by carriage is a particular delight), so too are the young couple different in this strange netherworld both in and out of society, pretending they are cousins for the sake of the Verdurins and their ilk.

While we're given a bit of foreshadowing for Volume Five, in that Albertine is clearly becoming Marcel's psychological prisoner, at least in his own mind, the better part of this section is given over to the love affair of Morel and Charlus, completing the triptych of relationships that began with Odette and Swann. It's very intriguing in the way that Charlus' love basically strips him of any self-awareness and practicality, and the way Proust indicates that Morel clearly is not that into it. The comedy is really amped up here, from Charlus at dinners, not realising he is being mocked, to plotting a duel that he never intends to carry out. By this point, of course, we're reading not "for the story", but nevertheless while I find Charlus repugnant, his fierce personality manages to keep the reader intrigued through the sometimes overgrown plains of Sodom and Gomorrah.

"His nature was really like a sheet of paper that has been folded so often in every direction that it is impossible to straighten out."

The above quote is possibly my favourite of the entire work, incidentally.

Four. The final, brief section of this novel continues the trend of previous books, in acting more as a preface to the next volume. Marcel's jealousy of Albertine has now gone into overdrive, to the point where it inadvertently destroys his friendship with Bloch (forever? I hope not!). In these last pages, Proust reaches his most lyrical, in passages of beauty that we haven't really experienced - at least of such a height - since the days that Odette was a main character. Some of my favourite images include a restaurant waiter portrayed as a series of "successive statues of a young god running", the conceit of Charlus as a fish in an aquarium, swimming delicately but not realising visitors are laughing behind the glass only metres away, and an absolutely fantastic analogy featuring a centaur. The ending is not particularly a surprise, given the narrator's penchant for ironical twists, but it certainly creates a great narrative hook, while also making us - or at least me - worried about his mental state. This young man is just refusing to grow up. No wonder, really, given he is surrounded by complete and utter children - maybe that's the point of all these dinner parties?

"Oh, if I could write like that!" - Virginia Woolf on reading Proust, 1922

In closing, then, I'm excited to learn that a change in tone is coming in The Prisoner. As much as I've enjoyed this book, the focus away from Marcel's psychology, which made the first two volumes such captivating and perfect reads, has been frustrating. Even Proust's delightful page-long sentences occasionally became enervating this time around. Nevertheless, Sodom and Gomorrah remained a deeply human work, full of sneaky character portrayals and staggering moments of beauty. As previously mentioned, if you're reading the Vintage editions, be sure to get a hold of Volume 6: it contains the Reader's Guide which apparently replaces any attempt at serious footnotes, with its dense thematic and character indices. They're great, they really are, but I'm beginning to suspect that an Annotated Proust will become more and more necessary. There were sections of social dialogue that were essentially indecipherable to me, beyond what I could gleam from context. As a music lover, I was deeply amused by the constant musical reference, particularly in the older Mme de Cambremer and whether Debussy will eventually become "as passe as Massenet", but it's not enough to expect readers to look up the two musicians. Without an understanding of their place in the repertoire, provided by an annotation, the point - both comic and serious - is lost, and this is but one of hundreds of examples I have come across thus far. The decision, for instance, to render all house mottoes in the original French or Latin also creates problems for audiences of a generation who don't habitually learn these things in school. If this is a Reader's Edition, I would like it to be as readable as possible. All of which is to say, this is a wonderful translation - and in a few years, once I've regained my strength - I'll be sure to check in on one of the 21st century traditions beginning to make their presence known - but I think we need to slightly adjust our approach if the great novelists are to regain their appeal in this new iWorld.

So, people are ageing, dying, getting engaged, getting married, getting more and more bitter. I'm excited for whatever comes next for Marcel, Albertine, and those crazy kids as the 20th century begins.

"I must marry Albertine." show less

3.5 stars.

"It is human to seek out what hurts us and then at once to seek to get rid of it."

That brilliant quote encapsulates this reading experience. Our long-winded narrator is back. All grown up, as obsessive as ever, still sensitive in some ways, and his detailed observations and contemplations of his environment and time as striking as ever. I’m afraid this review is going to be as long-winded as our narrator.

The book continues where the last stopped, during the Dreyfus affair which famously showed the horrifying levels of anti-Semitism in France. The social circles our narrator moves in are as divided as the nation: the first group consisting of the old families with royal ties and conservative, blatantly expressing their show more anti-Semitism. The second group, consisting mainly of the nouveau-riche and liberal individuals, and the artists and scholars they bring into their circle, mostly support Dreyfus. This book covers a lot (anti-Semitism, homosexuality, social classes, race, gender roles and norms with surprising theories about gender expression), which made me question that vacuous theory about politics and its place in fiction with books such as these and writers such as Proust held up and declared apolitical (let alone that nothing can be apolitical, and only the foolish think themselves gleaned of any trace of the political thoughts of their time, including this one, or the political status given to them).

This is the book I wanted to read most from the volumes. My local library had all the volumes except this one which puzzled me for some time, and my smart and wonderful friend Mwana pointed out what should have been obvious from the start. That it was missing could possibly be that its title caught the attention of a religious homophobe who requested it to be removed from the library. A plausible occurrence; which is odd because that's where I found Renault's The Charioteer, a formative read for me (even though it was last borrowed in the 80s when I took it so maybe the reader didn't get to it), and that the library carries several Holinghurst copies (the thought of this reader innocently stumbling into one of his cruising scenes, truthfully, brings a smile to my face). Which is to say that it took me a while to read this, and it wasn’t until I found all the volumes–this one included this time–luckily and randomly from a second-hand book vendor in the streets of Nairobi that I got to it.

The book's central theme is, allegedly, homosexuality. At least as observed in early twentieth century France, and wouldn’t that make an interesting read? Of course the writer of this book was closeted in his lifetime, even fought a duel when accused of having a gay relationship:https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/02/day-history-february-5th-dueling-dandies/, and his housekeeper maintained to the very last that he wasn’t gay and so, unsurprisingly, the narrator of this book is, allegedly, a neutral observer. For the first time since I started these books, at least from what I can recall, Proust subtly mentions the autobiographical connections the reader could draw and assume from the narrator of the book and the writer:

...“All this,” the reader will remark, “tells us nothing as to the lady’s failure to oblige; but since you have made so long a digression, allow me, dear author, to waste another moment of your time by telling you that it is a pity that, young as you were (or as your hero was, if he isn’t you...

Perhaps aware of the allegations that could arise from the assumptions, he leaves the narrator at a perfect distance. While not explicitly violent or abrasive of homosexual individuals and relationships, and both even described as normal as heterosexual individuals and relationships which is quite liberal for his time, the point of view can’t be the same, and our narrator is even reduced to a peep and eavesdropper at times, and there is only so far a neutral observer can go. I understand and I’m in complete agreement of the writer’s right to discretion, especially considering the times he lived in over a century ago, that would be compromised had this book been narrated by a person who is not only an observer, but part of the queer community in this period. Considering that part of the greatness of this work is how incredibly immersive the narrator is and how he brings the reader completely into his world, that we get only the scraps was disappointing.

Still, even with the scraps, there are incredible points of realization and recognition. One of which being that unspoken language, which fascinates me, that exists between queer individuals, and especially those who are most vulnerable to violence or live in violent places, which can’t be aptly articulated since its essence exists in and consists of the unmentionable. Where gesture, hunch, gaze, look, and luck does more work than words ever could. Its description, Proust excellently provides, is like giving shape to the amorphous or laying grip to fog.

Then of course there’s the insights on life, time, memory, development (it was really adorable reading the narrator’s fascination with–for him– the newly invented telephone, motorcar and airplane), and other interesting subjects such as the etymology of French towns (which went on a bit too much for my liking) are always a pleasure to read from Proust. From this volume I made the very obvious and taken for granted discovery: the distance which time creates, between the area that is called then and that relative area defined as now, which our narrator brings attention to the reader, not so subtly–even humorously–at some point in the beginning of the book and through the reflections of his youth. Carried through age and experience the gift the passage of time, mingled with whatever notions and biases we have, gives us: perspective.

I wish the central theme had remained central, that it hadn’t deviated as much as it did, being less fleshy than better circumstances would have made it. That all of this hadn’t been patches of brilliance surrounded by clouds in the form of high-society anecdotes and the meaning of names of towns I have little care to know of (and in the writer’s defense I was most likely nowhere near the audience he envisioned for his book).There’s so much that I could go on and on about (such as that early version of modern stanning with the Cambremer ladies arguing about Chopin and Debussy), as our narrator does, and as I’ve probably done so far, but this book, while underwhelming in certain ways, is still incredible. show less

He wrote this? And published it?

I heard that you can read the Albertine Cycle on its own – which consists of #5-6 and (optional) this #4. Since #4 was called Sodom and Gomorrah, and what brought me to Albertine’s story was its descent into the sexual underworld, I began here.

First I’ll say, this is a lively book, a trot of a read next to what I’ve read of #1 – aside from its racy subject matter. Here I found his endlessness mesmerising instead of stupefying, so that you sail along in a spell and the lack of paragraphs only mean you can’t put the book down. If you, like me, don’t fancy his childhood and adolescence, if you never lay awake for a kiss from your mother and can’t commit to seventy pages on the topic, then I show more can heartily recommend you do as I’ve done and pick up later books.

Before I’m distracted from his finer qualities I’ll remember to say, his observation of people is – beyond. He’s got to be the greatest observer out. Habits of mind and habits of interaction, that you recognise but haven’t expressed, he’s put there in clinical simplicity on the page, and this is the main joy of Proust. The rest of my review is about the racy bits.

He wrote this? He published this?

As cross-dressed, as queer, as convoluted as As You Like It. It reminds me of nothing so much. As cynical, as nostalgic... with more comedy of manners, though. Don’t believe the talk that this is negative towards inverts. Invert of course is a historical term he uses, and then, what’s inverted here? In Proust’s life Albertine was an Albert. Had he written about an Albert, and (for argument’s sake at the moment) his morbid fears of Albert running off with a woman, I’d want to bash myself over the head with this book. But invert that and what do you have? A crazy situation where the guy’s obsessively jealous of his girl’s Sapphists on the side. The plot lacks plausibility, and you know what? So does As You Like It. Possibly there were Sapphists behind every bush at Balbec – who’s to know? I say the entire edifice is implausible, and meant to be.

I’ve never read The Well of Loneliness because I’m afraid of the self-doubt and self-torment I may find in its pages. In Proust I didn’t find them, and why? He’s inverted everything. Thus he removes himself from Baron Charlus and can take on his famous scientific detachment, and vivisect him like an insect. And thus he makes his love story, that isn’t detached, comic. He has cross-dressed them into a comic distance, where he can write without self-pity or self-hatred. How else do you do it, in his time? Like Radclyffe Hall, but as I say, I’ve cringed to read her. It’s not that he’s disguised himself – he’s told us in his girls’ masculine names and in the simple contemplation how he knows so bloody much about Baron Charlus’ tribe. That’s why it’s like a cross-dressed Shakespeare play. You scratch your head over the permutations, and he can work on several levels. I think it’s an inspired strategy that happens to be very, very funny.

Insofar as he waxes scientific he’s going to be outmoded, obviously, by new science. For a start, though, he’s of historical interest, isn’t he? And he is Proust. I have to point out, while he explains these men as women on the inside, he says once, this only goes for his time and place. In other climes the phenomenon can be quite different: they weren’t women-men in Ancient Greece. Who’s to argue with him? Weren’t they so straitened into their two sexes that this is the way they acculturated themselves? Here’s where you need a Shakespeare play, to shake up that straitjacket thinking – I’m convinced Proust is doing his best.

His infatuation with Albertine is stoked like an engine by jealousy. Shovel in jealousy and he’s infatuated again, although he was just about to dump her. It’s that pathological – and that absurdist, and hilarious. I never had the least interest in jealousy as a motive in fiction. However, this is different. Sapphists are worse to him because he cannot rival them – nor even imagine what they do for his mistress, he says. If the fuel of this (when uninverted) is the fear and anxiety that your love is going to run off with the ‘right’ sex, because it’s so much easier and because you’re only an invert – then I can understand the pathology. There’s no guilt in evidence, on Proust’s part, for what he was, just this indirect portrait of ghastly self-doubt. – And I’ve contradicted what I said above, about no Well-of-Loneliness style self-doubt. His technique takes away the pain, but not the insight.

My understandings of the book, of course, are my own and no fault of Proust’s.
Also I may change my mind with #5-6; I’ve read this in isolation. show less

I finished Volume 4 of Proust a few days ago (Moncrieff-Kilmartin-Enright translation, Modern Library edition), and thought I’d put a few thoughts down in a review. This is my first review of any Proust volume. It feels somewhat awkward to be reviewing one volume, since it’s really just one chunk of a bigger novel. This will be more a set of observations and complaints that apply to the full work (so far).

Sodom is volume 4 out of 7 of ISOLT. That is, it is the center of the set. As such there is a certain psychological satisfaction that comes from completing it: “I’ve read more that half of Proust!”, along with the confidence that I will complete the whole work.

The book of course is great - five stars. But after four long show more volumes, I mainly want to write down my complaints. And my main complaint is about the narrator.

The narrator (we can also call him Marcel) is a severely underdeveloped character. Despite living inside his head for a couple of thousand pages (so far), he remains a cipher. What is his personality? If you met him at one of these dinner parties he loves to describe, how would he strike you? Is he extroverted, a joke-teller or raconteur? Or a serious conversationalist, getting into long detailed discussions on esoteric or artistic topics? Or a quiet introvert, mainly sitting quietly, listening to others? He must be a likeable person, judging by the way so many hosts and hostesses try to invite him. But why? We don’t know, although there are occasional circumstantial clues in the form of comments from the people around him.

Yes, he sometimes describes, in loving detail, the fine shading around certain emotional experiences, such as his mourning loss of his grandmother. But his thoughts, his internal monologues, are left out. How does he think about his life, his goals, his problems, and his plans?

Let’s take one glaring example. During Sodom, we learn that Albertine is being considered as a marriage candidate for him, at least in the eyes of others. Is he considering marrying her? Is he spending a lot of time thinking about whether to marry her? How does he approach the possibility? Does he mentally weigh up the pros and cons? Is he trying to visualize married life with her, to picture her as his wife, possibly even as the mother of his children? Does he compare her against other single women he knows, or against the wives of friends and relatives? He must be going through such thoughts and mental exercises while at Balbec during the course of the book, but all this is left out of the book.

Proust doesn’t share these key internal moments, to the reader’s great frustration,, and as a result it becomes hard to identify with the narrator, or to like him very much. So when Marcel behaves poorly to others - especially to Albertine - we end up rather disliking him, while she, Albertine, gets our sympathy.

And this lack of characterization of the narrator - who is the main character after all - is all the more ironic given the novel’s reputation as an introspective, interior-oriented novel. It’s not at all. It does share, at great length, Marcel’s acute perceptions of the world around him, and especially his delving into the thoughts and motivations of the people he encounters. But it doesn’t share the stream of thoughts of the narrator, as do other modernists such as Joyce and Woolf, or even the great nineteenth century novelists. This creates distance between the reader and the main character, instead of the identification that would lead us, the reader, to root for him, or even sympathize with him very much.

Now more than halfway through ISOLT, I’m not sure I can even identify what the protagonist’s main problem is - what is he trying to solve, or to achieve? What is he searching or struggling for? Where is the main tension or dilemma of the novel? I don’t see it yet, and that concerns me.

For the record, I still love the book, from the texture of the prose to the long unexpected digressions. I just wish I could know Marcel better. Let’s see if this issue gets resolved - or exasperated - in the upcoming volumes. show less

"I absolutely must marry Albertine." With these words of the narrator Marcel Proust ends the final chapter of Sodom and Gomorrah, the fourth volume in his monumental In Search of Lost Time. Whether the narrator is sincere or not, any lack of sincerity is more than supplanted by his passion, if not love, for Albertine. Throughout this volume and especially in the final chapters the narrator has had a tempestuous relationship with Albertine both in his mind and in his life in Balbec and...more "I absolutely must marry Albertine." With these words of the narrator Marcel Proust ends the final chapter of Sodom and Gomorrah, the fourth volume in his monumental In Search of Lost Time. Whether the narrator is sincere or not, any lack of show more sincerity is more than supplanted by his passion, if not love, for Albertine. Throughout this volume and especially in the final chapters the narrator has had a tempestuous relationship with Albertine both in his mind and in his life in Balbec and its environs. Some of the other themes that are prominent in the final sections of this volume are the passion of both Baron Charlus and the Prince for young 'Charlie' Morel. Morel, a reprobate and a cad who is made somewhat appealing (at least for this reader) by virtue of being a talented pianist, plays with both men without the other knowing about his liaisons much as a mouse plays with a cat. The ruling word throughout for both the narrator and other characters is passion, if not lust, in the erotic sense which pervades several relationships. The issue of the Dreyfus case is also prominent and Proust is able to convey the complicated views of both sides through the seeming necessity that most prominent characters be identified as either "Dreyfusards" or not. The overall feeling I retain from this reading is one of the cumulative effect of the layers of themes, many of which have appeared in the previous three volumes and will, undoubtedly, appear again in the final volumes of In Search of Lost Time. To some extent this is due to the influence of Wagner and the use of literary "liet motifs" by Proust and the technique of the search, in this case the search for love. That the search for love seems to devolve into an impasse of passion for the sake of sanity if not love itself is a wonder -- one of the many wonders of this continuously engaging novel. show less