Noel’s Reviews > Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic > Status Update

…distinguish this girl, Gilberte, from the general floral fecundity, instantly fell in love with her. If there was ever a bigger pansy than my father, it was Marcel Proust.

(AAAHHH this is my favorite scene from… Swann’s Way, I’m pretty sure. I still feel bad about not having finished In Search of Lost Time. I gave up near the end of The Captive.)

(This is the passage Bechdel quotes, by the way: “We stopped for a moment by the fence, Lilac-time was nearly over; some of the trees still thrust aloft, in tall purple chandeliers, their tiny balls of blossom, but in many places among their foliage where, only a week before, they had still been breaking in waves of fragrant foam, these were now spent and shrivelled and discoloured, a hollow scum, dry and scentless. My grandfather pointed out to my father in what respects the appearance of…” This book is replete with literary references. I’m trying hard to suspend my judgement of pretentiousness lol.)

(Bechdel also comments on how “lost” (In Search of Lost Time) doesn’t capture the full resonance of “perdu” (À la recherche du temps perdu): “This means not just lost but ruined, undone, wasted, and spoiled.” (“Perdu” is obviously derived from the same Latin word as the English—actually French-originated—word “perdition.”))