Remembrance Of Things Past 2008 discussion

Almost done with volume three...
It's been a fun read. Yes, it's mostly a dinner party, but what a dishy dinner party! I love his characterizations, and observations about the aristocracy. Proust deconstructs its aura: how these feudal titles gained prestige and mystique throughout the years, regardless of how ridiculous many of them many ot these dukes and princesses may be. I don't want to spoil this, (if anybody's not there yet), but I love his running "cousin" joke...It turns out pretty much every titled guest, regardless of nationality,is somehow related.

This is a silly question, but I'm curious. How long has it been taking you? I'll admit I miss days, especially when there are too many papers to correct. It's funny, before I started this journey, I read an essay by Jane Smiley. She claims that readers need 70 days to finish all of the books, reading at a pace of 1 to 1.5 hours a day. Is anyone able to do that? I think she's bragging.

Slow reader that I may be, I'm still having fun :)

Pamela -- I admit that I've yet to explore Smiley's take on reading Proust but my own journey began by reading Phyllis Rose's book The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time in which she ties events in her own life to her year long reading of Proust. Thinking I could do it in a year was perhaps not my only misconception as I set off on my adventure. I did manage in five years to read the first four and a good beginning of the fifth volume on my own and then stalled out before not only rereaduing all of what I'd read on my own but finishing volume five and reading the final volume with the Constant Reader group with a group -- our little band of Proustians began strong and then limped along -- at ten pages a day it should have been a one year project -- we took a year and half approximately -- we tended to take time off and slow down and get sidetracked in our discussions but we did read it all and have no regrets to speak of. The point here in my ramblings? Just keep to it -- if you leave it for a week -- go back and begin where you left off or go back to a point where you feel comfortable and overlap a bit -- and the next time a small break happens -- do it again. You will not be sorry you finish this marvelous work is my opinion, even if it takes you two or three times the time you may have originally believed it would take!

Proust would both love and hate social networking -- Facebook, Twitter, etc. It would be the answer to his prayers (and would not have necessitated the writing of this opus):

Each of our actions, our words, our attitudes is cut off from the “world,” from the people who have not directly perceived it, by a medium the permeability of which is infinitely variable and remains unknown to ourselves; having learned from experience that some important utterance which we eagerly hoped would be disseminated (such as those so enthusiastic speeches which I used at one time to make to everyone and at every opportunity on the subject of Mme Swann, thinking that among so many scattered seeds one at least would germinate) had at once, often because of our very anxiety, been hidden under a bushel, how immeasurably less do we suppose that some tiny word which we ourselves have forgotten, which may not even have been uttered by us but formed along its way by the imperfect refraction of a different word, could be transported, without every being halted in its progress, infinite distances -- in the present instance to the Princesse de Guemantes -- and succeed in diverting at our expense the banquet of the gods! What we remember of our conduct remains unknown to our nearest neighbor; what we have forgotten that we ever said, or indeed what we never did say, flies to provoke hilarity in another planet….

I was so excited to finish Volume III! I hate to say, Pamela, that I wasn't into the dinner party in the second half. I thought it was funny how he had waited and waited to be invited into that crowd, but then says (after recounting their conversation in excruciating detail) that he had scarcely listened to the conversation b/c it wasn’t his definition of pleasure….

His self-awareness redeems him (among many other qualities!), like when he describes friendship (like that with Saint-Loup) as being necessarily mediocre, but acknowledging that this characterization is selfishly cynical. Such a sad man, and as my friend Harry says, one with perhaps no sense of humor but a deep sense of irony. The jury’s still out for me.

So awesome when he describes genealogy -- both how it shows up physically and socially -- helping make history knowable. And I love the idea of art progressing like science. Art and literature. Even if it’s not true.

The most touching part for me was the part about his grandmother's failing health and death, and how he didn't realize how insensitive he was to her until after she was gone, and the guilt he associated with his treatment of her. Even a telephone conversation he has with her -- so poignant.

I’ve just started Volume IV, and boy does it start out juicy! Sodom and Gomorrah, indeed!

So did you finish them all, Pamela?

P.S. -- More discussion you all may be interested in regarding Proust's sense of humor (or lack thereof) at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Has anyone else finished it?

I completed it several weeks back. If you haven't yet, it's totally worth it, even for the beautiful last sentence.