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youtu.be/dygSXRbAwck?...

I read most of À la recherche du temps perdu in a university French class and this article brings back memories of so many favorite passages.

I just realised I haven’t re-read my copy of Proust in the 21st century! Need to take it off the shelf again.

I also got this - www.thamesandhudson.com/products/pai... - which I dip into every now and then.

I did S-M for volume 1 but disliked it, then Oxford for 2 but no later vols had then be published, and Penguin for 3-7, variable quality

While frustrating, I still felt a sense of accomplishment having completed that massive tome of drivel 😀

It can be so entertaining. I’ve only read the first, years ago, but I still sometimes think of his aunts’ endearing ridiculousness.

There was a site called Infinite Summer, which was an online reading group for those wanting to read Infinite Jest. It suggested reading 70 pages per week and it worked really well.

I finished it in May, after three years, and have been feeling adrift ever since, reading-wise. The idea of restarting is not weird at all.

Bravo for your persistence and account of it. La Recherche is a fascinating journey, not at all pretentious as sometimes feared , it is deeply human hence its relevance till now. I am very interested by the AI take on it and will check Katherine Elkins writings. Merci!

I read French and have run aground on which edition, so good luck with that 😅

this is quite a roast www.bostonreview.net/articles/lel...

You will love it, even when it feels impossible — it’s beyond stimulating

Ah thank you, Rory

Very nice reflection. One minor correction: Murat’s book on Proust is not forthcoming, but rather Mandell’s translation of it is forthcoming

A genuinely life changing book. Alongside the insight into identity and psychology, there is an enormous amount of experimental, trickery, half-hidden allusions, word-play and even hints of significant alternative narratives that are unseen by the fallible narrator. It’s just stunning.

I managed the first one with great pleasure and profit. But I only got through half of book two. Ars longa, vita brevis.

I just tried getting a small book club to read Jon Fosse’s Septology. They ran me out of the room after they realised it was a 900 page single sentence. May need to find a new bunch for Proust.

This is why we need to repeat the book group. I’ve been reading Moncrieff because it was free on Kindle and I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to commit. Well, I’m committed. Need to try a different translation next time.

Thank you 🙏🏼

Is that the Scott-Moncrieff > Kilmartin > Enright rendering?

Thanks. Also yr account of the complex inversions of Charlus’s emotions reminds me of McGrath’s The Grotesque. A man loves his butler, but cannot acknowledge it, so switches it: he hates the butler. But this too is unacceptable, so he reverses it again and believes his butler hates *him*. Delicious.