Readers Inc. - Monthly Book Club! discussion

Hello readers!

Welcome to our big Proust read-along as we take on In Search of Lost Time.

This adventure in Proust will go a bit differently than other standard Readers Inc. books.

Instead of Chapters, we'll talk in Parts.

Please discuss the first part of Swann's Way (Combray) here.

Don't worry about spoilers. Just talk about the book as you read it. This discussion will be what you make of it. Talk about impressions you have, ideas you think Proust is suggesting, things you like and dislike, the language, typical things. Feel free to engage with other members directly asking questions or references, etc.

Swann's Way is a reread for me. I would like to say, stick with it.
The first part can be a bit dry as it's simply a character thinking about the act of sleeping, the meaning of sleep as he's attempting to go to sleep. Hang in there! :) We've got 7 months to go.

The hashtag we've officiated is #LostInProust along with our typical #ReadersInc please use them (if you wish) on your Twitter/Instagram feeds or Booktube videos to get the word out!

I read the first section of Combray today. So far good start. I had I hard time getting used to the language at first (I am reading the Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright translation); however, after the first 20 pages or so it got easier to read, and I start to enjoy it. It seems that this section is super important in terms of setting up the novel and its themes. For example, the narrator’s relationship with his mother and the themes memory and time.

One of the passages really I liked was when the narrator talks about the new lantern making his room unfamiliar which makes him feel lost – “…the mere changing in lighting was enough to destroy the familiar impression I had of my room…”

Also, I liked how he talked about sleep robbing individuals of their memories and identities – “…I woke up in the middle of the night, not knowing where I was, I could not even be sure of who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence…”

On another note, does anyone have any insight into the narrator/Proust relationship? Is the novel at all autobiographical?

It’s been interesting so far. One thing that strikes me (outside of the novel, but relating to it) is the rhythm. It’s unlike anything else I’ve read lately or am reading currently so it’s a bit disorienting to jump back into it. This might be a kind of work you have to devote large chunks of time to. Might not be easy to transition. Or this could just be my own reaction to it.

Aside from this initial shock, I felt very disoriented in the first few pages. Once it grabs you, it pulls you in and the situation makes more sense (a restless character broken from his normal sleep habits. In this case, waiting for his mother to kiss him goodnight. This will, historically as we know, become an important feature of the work.) He relies on the kiss to submit him into sleep state and as he has not received it upon the novel's opening, he cannot rest.

As I mentioned to Agnes from Beyond the Epilogue - I love how Proust defines thought in an almost physical form. As if what the narrator is thinking is a part of his actual body. The room seems to levitate at times because he’s so aware of everything around him. It does, in a sense, become like the ‘circle’ he speaks of surrounding a man in his sleep. So yes, I also felt intrigued by the mentioning of a different lantern. I was also moved by his pondering on an injured patient’s sleep and how he’d watch the bottom of the door for morning light to know he’d been ‘rescued.’

The work is largely notorious for its use of (or dabbling with) involuntary memories. Memories which are brought up by physical cues around us without any effort of our (sub)consciousness. This is more than apparent in Combray (as its his family's home) and probably even more so in the upcoming madeleine cake & tea sections. As for the relationship between Proust and his narrator - it's been widely discussed over the years that the narrator of In Search of Lost Time is a closeted homosexual. Proust was also thought to be but never confessed.
It's a part of why I think the work is so meditative and thus, mysterious.

I can’t wait to move further. I’ve only gone about 40 pages.

Conrad wrote: "It’s been interesting so far. One thing that strikes me (outside of the novel, but relating to it) is the rhythm. It’s unlike anything else I’ve read lately or am reading currently so it’s a bit di..."
I agree with you that that this might be a work best read in chunks. I originally planned to read about 20 pages or so on weekdays, but quickly figured out that was not going to work for me. I think its worthwhile to set aside chunks of time and immerse yourself into the novel. It demands a lot of time from the reader. Even after you set it down, your mind keeps going back to it and processing what you have read. And if the first 40-50 pages are any indication of what the rest of the novel is like, Proust says a lot is a small amount of pages, and yet, nothing seems superfluous.

Hi everyone! So happy I can join you on this one. I'm on page 65 and so far I'm loving it!
I had the notion Proust would be biggest challenge to understand for me. While it takes some afford to figure out what he's saying, I think he's been clear so far in his themes. Maybe it's the translation that simplifies the writing style, but the use of long sentences help him to express more complex ideas. The short paragraphs helps the reader go back and have a better understanding of what he's trying to say.
I really loved the parts where the narrator tells about his relationship with his parents. I can relate to that anxiety he felt as a child at not having your mom near you. And how sensitive he was to his surroundings.
I got very emotional when reading this: her anger would have saddened me less than this new gentleness, unknown to my childhood experience; I felt that I had with an impious and secret finger traced a first wrinkle upon her soul and brought out a first white hair on her head" ugh so beautiful.

Conrad wrote:"The work is largely notorious for its use of (or dabbling with) involuntary memories. Memories which are brought up by physical cues around us without any effort of our (sub)consciousness."
I love how something so trivial like this, which all of us experience, can be a key subject to a monumental work like In Search of Lost Time. How he describes the effect the mix of tea and pastry in his mouth had on him is something I would never had thought of seeing it in words.

Hi everyone! So excited for my first read-along with the Readers Inc. group!
Swann's Way is a reread for me. I'm on page 73 (the Lydia Davis translation), and I find that I'm loving it much more this time around. I agree that the specific rhythm of the prose rewards you for diving into the text for longer periods of time and devoting your full attention to it. At the same time, it does make it harder to transition to other books and back again. The first 10-20 pages were very challenging, but after that I got really immersed in the beautiful prose and the fascinating ideas.

I thought that famous tea & madeleine section where the narrator is suddenly struck by a powerful memory which was triggered by some common material objects was exquisite, and it was interesting to ruminate on the suggestion that the past is hidden outside the realm of our intelligence and beyond it’s reach thus it is a waste of effort to try to summon it with our mind.

I was amused by the scenes about the grand-mother's struggle against vulgarity and commercial banality, how “she could never resign herself to buying anything from which one could not derive an intellectual profit, and especially the profit which beautiful things afford us by teaching us to seek our pleasure elsewhere than in the satisfactions of material comfort and vanity. She's a very intriguing character.

I loved the section were he discusses how his family had constructed an artificial social personality for Swann and suggests that we, in general, “fill the physical appearance of the individual we see with all the notions we have about him, and in the total picture that we form for ourselves, these notions certainly have the greater part.” Thus we seem to have various different identities, constructed in the minds of different people that claim to know us. Unsettling thought but very interesting to think about, especially in relation to modern social media and online personas.

I was also moved by the scene where the narrator recognized that what at first seemed to him as a victory (getting his mother to sleep in his room because he was upset that she didn’t come that evening to give him a kiss before sleep) was actually painful to his mother because “this was a first abdication on her part before the ideal she had conceived for me, and that for the first time she, who was so courageous, was confessing herself defeated.”
I'm really impressed by Proust's skill to find words to describe such deep, delicate, and complex emotions.

I read the first 25 pages, so at least I made a start. I found it less difficult to get into it than when I first read it (but that was about 30 years ago & I was probably to young and too impatient). But it is a book, I think, that needs to be read in longer 'chunks', otherwise the rythm of the language and the atmospheric pull is lost on you.

And: like Conrad recommended, I chose the translation by Lydia Davis, which I really enjoy so far. (And her Notes on the translation are worth reading, too).

I fell out of the loop for a day or two (American election takes a toll)
but I'll be picking it up again. I'm nearly finished with the book and enjoying it and your guys comments immensely.

Just finished reading Combray. I struggled a bit towards the end when the narrator was describing the walks he and his family took while at Combray. Kept losing focus and rereading parts, but I'm glad I stuck with it. I'm going to think a bit on what I read before contributing to the discussion, but I wanted to check in and encourage everyone to continue reading. :)

I just started today!

A few things I noticed as I read this section:

Both the narrator and Aunt Leonie have a habit of watching or even spying on people. Aunt Leonie as she spends her days in bed watching people of the town from her bedroom window. While narrator first spies on M. Vinteuil through the drawing room window as M. Vinteuil places a sheet of music in a prominent position of the piano so that his guests notice. Later he also spies on Mlle. Vinteuil and her friend/lover. A theme developing?

The narrator seems to idealize certain women instead of seeing them as they really are. We see him do this when he meets Gilberte. He writes that he was struck with her gleaming black eyes, and yet, in his mind and his memory he sees her eyes as a “vivid azure.” Also, when he sees the Duchesse de Guermantes he is at first disappointed with her ordinary appearance. She does not look anything like her ancestors depicted in the tapestries and stained-glass windows of the church. But he is determined to overlook in her the features which remind him of other common women, and in the end, he is convinced that she is lovely and truly noble. He also writes that “there was always lurking in my mind the dream of a woman who would enrich me with her love.”

In this section he also talks about his discovery of literature and the desire to become a writer. He says that he “expected nothing less than the revelation of truth itself” as he read. We also see him doubt his own views/opinions until he starts to encounter similar views in the writing of Bergotte and this gives him some confidence. He says, “...it was suddenly revealed to me that my own humble existence and the realms of the true were less widely separated than I had supposed, that at certain points they actually coincided…” I think I lot of readers can relate with this.

What do you guys think of these lines? (A couple of pages from the end of this section.)

“It is because I believed in things and in people while I walked along those paths that the things and the people they made known to me are the only ones that I still take seriously and that still bring me joy. Whether it is because the faith which creates has ceased to exist in me, or because reality takes shape in the memory alone, the flowers that people show me nowadays for the first time never seem to me to be true flowers.”

My thoughts on “Swann’s Way” (1934, Moncrieff translation):

In Combray: Does anyone actually believe these reminiscences to be those of a child? I wonder if Proust ever spent time with children, because it feels like the narrator is projecting adult observations onto a child. No child that I know could provide four pages of details about hawthorn blossoms.

In Swann in Love: What happened to the first person narration? This section reads like a typical novel, with a 3rd person narrator. I’m a little confused at this, although I enjoyed the story.

Is it a mere coincidence that the name of Swann’s love is Odette (the name of the Swan Princess in “Swan Lake”)? I’m sure I’m not the only person to notice this.

“Obsessive” is the word that kept coming to mind throughout my reading of this volume--obsessing over the mother’s goodnight kisses, obsessing over Odette, obsessing over Gilberte, etc. I read somewhere that reading Proust is like reading through a catalog of neurosis. This seems to hold true, so far.

I actually enjoyed the writing more than I anticipated. In parts I found it quite enjoyable and even beautiful, despite being very slow and contemplative. I think my favorite passages are found on the last two pages (and not just because they are the last two pages! Ha ha).

Guys, I'm having such a hard time getting through this. I stopped to read another book, now I can't get back into it.
I'm not too far in, I'm just going to start over.

Am about 2/3 through the book now, and what strikes me most is that the world the narrator describes feels so ritualized to me. How people behave, what they do and what they think of each other, and even the walks - with the lengthy description of nature - because there are only two options (Swann's Way and Guermantes Way). Wondering whether these two walks symbolize the paths of life the narrator can choose, conformity and high society (Guermantes) or art and love (Swann), but maybe I am oversimplifying things.

And : who knew that you could write so many pages reminiscing about hawthorns...

Hey y'all. I'm DNF'ing for now.
I dread picking this up at this point.
I have a week off for the holidays next month I may go back to it then.
I'm disappointed because I was so excited to read this but it's not the right time.

I finished (and in time, in November)! The 2nd and the 3rd part couldnt quite grab me as much as the first part.
And I have to admit, in the 3rd part the narrator at times got on my nerves and I was thinking that it is a quite 'self-centred' book. (Yes, yes, I know thats the whole point but I couldnt always deal with it that well). At other times I was able to let myself being carried away by the rhythm and the flow of the language.
And I am looking forward to continuing.

I don't see a new thread for the second volume of Proust.

Am I the only one still working on this? (Misery loves company, you know.)

I hope we haven't given this up yet. I am still reading the books - about 100 pages from finishing the second one. Any one else still in?

MKLeo3 wrote: "I hope we haven't given this up yet. I am still reading the books - about 100 pages from finishing the second one. Any one else still in?"

I am still in! Will be reading the 2nd volume over Xmas. I would suggest we just continue discussing the secod book in this thread until Conrad makes a new one.

This is a great idea! I'm a little late to the party but I'll be starting Swann's Way in January and hopefully doing the following books each month :)

Has Conrad stopped making videos/running this group?

I was wondering that too. All his channel content is gone (or possibly set to private) and he hasn't made any new threads on here.

Liz wrote: "I was wondering that too. All his channel content is gone (or possibly set to private) and he hasn't made any new threads on here."

I'm sure Conrad would be happy for those continuing with Proust to speak here/find support with others doing the same, or just to continue in our own time too.
He'll come back if he can, I'm sure :)

Otherwise, I miss him, and thank him for bringing me back to Proust this time. And thank all of you who commented on this thread - I was glad to receive these thoughts in my inbox, though I was silent myself.

I hope my comment wasn't received negatively. I'm not angry just worried. I hope everything is okay.

Liz wrote: "I hope my comment wasn't received negatively. I'm not angry just worried. I hope everything is okay."

not negative at all :)

Hi fellow Swannians, I have to admit I failed miserably in December, I didnt read the 2nd book... But I am still determined to continue & pick up BOTH, the 2nd and the third volume in January. Anybody else still with me on this challenge?
And Conrad, if you're reading this: we MISS you!!!

Britta wrote: "Hi fellow Swannians, I have to admit I failed miserably in December, I didnt read the 2nd book... But I am still determined to continue & pick up BOTH, the 2nd and the third volume in January. Anyb..."

I need a larger break in between (and other books call!), but I might learn that this is a mistake, that they should be read closely.
I'll be with you in Proustian spirit !
Good luck with it all :-)

I'll readily admit I've not finished the Nov book or even started the Dec volume - The last couple of months of 2016 have been hectic to say the least. I'm going to attempt to continue on - fingers crossed I'll be able to catch up!

Liz wrote: "I hope my comment wasn't received negatively. I'm not angry just worried. I hope everything is okay."

Same! Just wondering if all is well with him.
I know we all have lives off-line. Could just be that.

In any case, perhaps I'll tackle Proust again in the new year?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I finished 'Within a Budding Grove' last week.

I must be perfectly honest in saying that I'm not enjoying Proust, at all. I feel like I'm stuck in prison with a very annoying person (the narrator is neurotic, immature, high-maintenance, a hypochondriac, a liar--I could go on). And the preoccupation with class and rank is absurd. I'm committed to continue my reading through January, but if things don't change I will probably DNF at that point.

I had a number of observations to share about the second volume, but as it appears that no one else has read it, I will refrain.

I finished volume 3 today. I will not be continuing on with Proust....too little return on investment, IMO.

I must say that despite my not enjoying this novel, the last few pages of volume three were brilliant in showing the true nature of the characters.

If I were to choose a theme for these three volumes I would choose "superficial love".

My favorite quote from volume three: Swann, "...one can't have a thousand years of feudalism in one's blood with impunity."

For those of you carrying on with this challenge, you have my utmost respect and well wishes!