The Guermantes Way: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 3 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
by Marcel Proust
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 381)
Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
all
I do think of this as one long novel, not seven. It is the best novel I've read (I'm about half-way through). Proust goes right past the normal terms/constraints of writing. I almost wouldn't call it a "novel" in the ordinary sense. But it is very much a novel, which is an important part of its greatness.
I am consistently struck by the physicality of this writing. Part of it comes from the sheer amount of it; the length of the book. But the difficulty of understanding the lon...more
I am consistently struck by the physicality of this writing. Part of it comes from the sheer amount of it; the length of the book. But the difficulty of understanding the lon...more
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Read in September, 2007
The first two volumes of this novel blew me away. This third novel was admittedly tougher for me personally. I got halfway through it the summer before grad school, put it down the day before math camp, and didn't pick it up again until two months after I graduated. Losing my momentum made it very hard to get back into it two years later. Furthermore, this entire novel was about Parisian high society, their parties, and the narrator's fascination with them. And what segment of the populatio...more
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What I learned from this book: that books can be not only worlds -- new ones, reflective ones, old ones to learn about, places to escape into -- but also companions. That the grace, beauty, curiosity, neurosis, spirituality, subjectivity, humor, temperament, and of an writer can be such that you are happy when you are reading him and lonely when you are not. Less than perfect French means I read A la recherche slowly (it's true what they say, though, that he's "easier" in French than ...more
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Read in December, 2007
Well, it's not as good as "Swann's Way," but better than "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower." Comparing them is kind of ridiculous, though, since Proust is one of the best writers I've ever read. Here's an Emily Dickinson poem:
A Thought went up my mind today -
That I have had before -
But did not finish - some way back -
I could not fix the Year -
Nor where it went - nor why it came
The second time to me -
Nor definitely, what it was -
Have I the Art to s...more
A Thought went up my mind today -
That I have had before -
But did not finish - some way back -
I could not fix the Year -
Nor where it went - nor why it came
The second time to me -
Nor definitely, what it was -
Have I the Art to s...more
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Read in January, 2008
I didn't enjoy this book as much as I liked Swann's Way and Within A Budding Grove. The first half of the book was pretty good, and had some very funny parts, but the second half really dragged on forever, as 300+ pages of it consisted of the narrator's being present at this incredibly snobbish and boring dinner party. I'm guessing that Proust's intent in wirting the interminable dinner party scene was to point out all the absurd foibles of the social elite of Paris's Faubourg-Saint-Germain, b...more
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Read in December, 2007
Currently reading this. When reading Proust you have to commit to at least 25 pages a day or wait till the holidays like I did where you have a lot of spare time waiting in airports, waiting for the relatives to show up. Reading Proust novels in themselves is addicting.
Still think he is a weird guy due to his obsessions with some women, scared of sleeping in a strange hotel room, and works himself up for one event.
___________
Finished reading this book, finally. It was funny, in th...more
Still think he is a weird guy due to his obsessions with some women, scared of sleeping in a strange hotel room, and works himself up for one event.
___________
Finished reading this book, finally. It was funny, in th...more
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Read in July, 2007
Despite my initial reluctance to pick up where I left off by reading a new translation, I was very relieved to find out that the new version is actually very good. I'm planning to read the next volume in the new translation as well, but I'll finish off the remaining two with the good old Moncrieff version.
In addition to having some wonderfully amusing scenes and commentary about the society and salons of the narrator's Paris, this volume also contained a couple of my favorite sections I've ...more
In addition to having some wonderfully amusing scenes and commentary about the society and salons of the narrator's Paris, this volume also contained a couple of my favorite sections I've ...more
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Read in July, 2006
I actually read the Modern Library Edition, but I wish I'd read this one, I think.
I had been told that the first volume (Swann's Way) is the most "difficult" to get into, but I find this to be just the opposite. I LOVED LOVED LOVED that one. and i think Proust really said all he needed to say about love and memory there. Maybe Vol. II was necessary for the teenage romance thing (though I found the narrator in that one becoming tiresome, which i guess teenagers are, but i don't think...more
I had been told that the first volume (Swann's Way) is the most "difficult" to get into, but I find this to be just the opposite. I LOVED LOVED LOVED that one. and i think Proust really said all he needed to say about love and memory there. Maybe Vol. II was necessary for the teenage romance thing (though I found the narrator in that one becoming tiresome, which i guess teenagers are, but i don't think...more
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Read in February, 2007
This book has been my least favorite of In Search of Lost Time , mainly because it comprised almost entirely of depicting the French salon society of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Unless you're really interested in the impact of the Dreyfus affair on Parisian society, you will probably not find this book all that stimulating. That being said, there are some great sections, like the section where Marcel describes the illness and death of his grandmother. Also, the last five pages of the ...more
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Read in February, 2008
Four stars instead of five because Marcel is not really very present for this book, and so it is not fueled by his desires. Instead, he's an observer. A brilliant death scene in the middle breaks up the long, flighty dinner party scenes which are filled with mostly shallow, irritating people. The death scene, placed where it is, just underlines how utterly pathetic the lives of most people are--and how they choose to be this way.
His astute and devastating observations of human behavior a...more
His astute and devastating observations of human behavior a...more
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Read in May, 2008
As I neared the end of this volume, I was able for the first time to feel, rather than simply be aware of that fact that this is one long work rather than 7, to the point that it is pointless and maybe not possible to chose favorites. But compartmentalization, analogies and categories are inherent bound to life in our generation, so I will have to say that, by the pound, I liked his observations better in the first 2 volumes. However, I remember that it wasn't until I had finished the 2nd volume...more
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Working on this now. As far as I'm concerned, Proust is the best author out there in terms of cadence. His sentences are weightless, and spiral and dance across the pages like feathers and leaves, caught through the wind. (It's stupidly fruitless to try to describe a Proustian sentence in sentences of your own....nothing you write can possibly be more beautiful than some of the passages he writes, so to try to describe him in the most banal terms of beauty is doing him a great disservice.)
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Read in June, 2008
Again: waves of interest, waves of utter boredom. The material that held me the most was the death of Proust's grandmother, as well as the occasional delicate descriptions of nighttime travels. But 50 page stretches of party gossip is a bit hard for me to penetrate, give or take the occasional scatching take-down.
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Read in August, 2006
recommends it for:
to anyone who has time on his/her hands...you'll need it
Read Proust! This book gives a chilling account (buried within hundreds of pages of social commentary) of the death of the narrator's grandmother. It may be the most sensitive telling of the passing of a loved one I have read. And I like to read about death:)
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the most difficult so far to get through, although the barbed, fizzy society the narrator is keeping sped the last 2 or 3 hundred pages along nicely. on to volume 4...
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Read in February, 2007
So it goes and goes. You either like 5,000 page novels or don't. And to think Proust wanted the whole thing bound up as one book...
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I gave birth several times before I finished Proust’s In Search of …, but I’m happy that I read it anyway.
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Read in February, 2007
My tolerance for 7 volume books with almost no plot is high. Very high.
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Read in June, 2008
this offers some advantages over the Modern Library translation.
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