Brain Pain discussion

Weeks Eight and Nine – Mar. 5 thru Mar. 18
[NOTE: We scheduled two weeks for this section because of its length.]

This discussion covers:

9. Albertine
Penguin: 425-531
Vintage: 492-620
First paragraph: "My hesitation between the different girls of the little band, all of whom retained something of the collective charm which had at first disturbed me..."

Well, we're approaching the end of the journey with Proust (for this volume, I mean, those brave souls who want to read the whole of Proust's work still have many more thousands of pages to go before the end) and you would expect to get some sense of loose ends being tied up, some kind of resolution being achieved. But Proust gives you the exact opposite of that! He introduces one of the main characters of the whole of A la recherche right when Within A Budding Grove is about to end. Is this a clever strategy to get you to commit yourself to the even longer (and, I'm told, more tedious) The Guermantes Way? Did Proust stop making sense several hundreds of pages ago anyway? Either way, this is just one of the things that's interesting and slightly amiss in this section of the book (and the book as a whole). I think it would be illuminating at this point to try to draw up a comparison between Gilberte and Albertine - maybe compare their pairing with that of the Swann's Way and the Guermantes way? What is it with the Narrator's constant attempts to order everything in doubles anyway? I'm intrigued, especially, by the idea of Gilberte being more writerly/performative because she's closely connected with Bergotte and Albertine being more painterly/visual because she's connected with Elsir - but I don't know yet, I have to look over the sections about Gilbert again to be able to make sense of it, Proust is such a sea of signs and sentences.

It would also be interesting to know if anybody else has managed to make it through the 600+ pages and got to the end of the book or if I've lost you all on the way. The threads will remain open indefinitely and I'm toying with the idea of posting some more interesting (?) tid bits and resources that I've scribbled in my notes but not brought together coherently for the benefit of future readers (or current ones which are shy?) who might not necessarily want/be able to engage in the discussion right now but would enjoy it at some later date.

Andreea wrote: "I'm toying with the idea of posting some more interesting (?) tid bits and resources that I've scribbled in my notes but not brought together coherently for the benefit of future readers (or current ones which are shy?) who might not necessarily want/be able to engage in the discussion right now but would enjoy it at some later date..."

Andrea I for one would appreiciate your additional notes any resources. I'm still playing catch up on all the reading.

I finished off 2011 by reading this one, so I'm already done. But I keep peeking in to see what you guys are saying. So, yeah... I'm interested in your thoughts, Andreea. I have some notes at home, but nothing terribly exciting outside of my little world.

I have listened to the abridged version now -- Part 1 twice and am about to start on Part 2 a second time. Because of the way they came to me, I actually listened to them in reverse order. I'm not sure how much that hurt the story line, given Proust's circling through memory, but it has certainly messed me up in posting with you all. (I have also listened to the abridged edition of The Guermantes Way and part of Sodom and Gomorrah, so my sense of the story is very much muddled. I'm not certain it much matters to my own enjoyment, but it certainly feels as if it matters to attempting to engage in a conversation. The abridged packaging from my library system seems really messed up and I haven't figured out all the relationships to the printed books yet. But still, wonderful listening!)

I have absolutely loved listening to ISOLT. The ideas, or at least the sentences, are fabulous, unlike anything I have encountered elsewhere. It has taken me awhile to get absorbed in the story, but I strongly expect to experience the whole bloody thing at least twice now, hopefully within the year of 2012.