false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172552540m/190576.jpg 190576 3 Marcel Proust whiled away the first half of his life as a self-conscious aesthete and social climber. The second half he spent in the creation of the mighty roman-fleuve that is <i>Remembrance of Things Past</i>, memorializing his own dandyism and parvenu hijinks even as he revealed their essential hollowness. Proust begins, of course, at the beginning--with the earliest childhood perceptions and sorrows. Then, over several thousand pages, he retraces the course of his own adolescence and adulthood, democratically dividing his experiences among the narrator and a sprawling cast of characters. Who else has ever decanted life into such ornate, knowing, wrought-iron sentences? Who has subjected love to such merciless microscopy, discriminating between the tiniest variations of desire and self-delusion? Who else has produced a grief-stricken record of time's erosion that can also make you laugh for entire pages? The answer to all these questions is: nobody. 184245 12 8 1982 Remembrance of Things Past: Volume I - Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove (Vintage) total:612|5:339|4:140|3:82|2:36|1:15| 612 2588 1169 85 5 3 false false Wed Sep 03 17:42:21 -0700 2008 Mon Dec 08 10:22:16 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 3 false false Thu Jul 26 11:06:06 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 26 11:11:04 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 4 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1991 Thu Jul 05 00:11:32 -0700 2007 Wed Apr 02 12:13:03 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1 3 false false Mon Jul 09 22:00:38 -0700 2007 Mon Aug 06 16:41:25 -0700 2007
My views can roughly be summarized as follows. At my age (50), life starts to seem short and Proust seems very, very long.]]> 5 2 false false Mon Apr 07 06:28:30 -0700 2008 Mon May 12 09:02:15 -0700 2008 more...]]> 2 2 false false Thu May 15 04:28:33 -0700 2008 Thu May 15 04:29:55 -0700 2008 5 1 false false Thu Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sun Apr 08 15:50:12 -0700 2007 Thu May 17 17:37:54 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Fri Aug 24 14:21:09 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 24 14:24:33 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2003 Sat Apr 25 18:34:03 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 25 19:00:23 -0700 2009 I tried starting Proust's "Swann's Way"... it is really amazingly written but very slow going... it doesn't help that the first few pages describe waking up from a dream state and not really remembering where one is...

April 2003
I started reading Proust. It...more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Sun Jul 29 13:18:50 -0700 2007 Sun Jul 29 13:18:50 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 2 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2001 Sun Aug 17 09:14:34 -0700 2008 Wed Aug 20 20:36:13 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Jan 02 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 16 11:56:10 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 03 13:09:11 -0800 2009 ...more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Jan 10 11:27:26 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 10 11:32:06 -0800 2009
The Swann and Odette episodes were also absorbing, though painful at times. ]]> 1 0 false false Mon Mar 23 22:43:05 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 23 23:04:20 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Mon Mar 16 21:41:59 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 16 21:45:37 -0700 2009 Don Quixote, Hopscotch, Ada, or Ardor, and this. I guess I'm craving something a bit, ah, weighty?

So but I've never even attempted Proust. Can any of my smart bookfriends te...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Mar 05 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 14 14:43:22 -0800 2009 Thu Mar 05 14:44:47 -0800 2009 2 Swann’s Way, and I was hooked. While talking about the significance in literature of Proust tasting the Madeline cookie, I remained caught up in the drama. I wanted to know who this Swann...more...]]> 2 0 false false Sat Jul 04 00:00:00 -0700 1998 Tue Oct 14 15:15:39 -0700 2008 Tue Oct 14 15:24:34 -0700 2008 À la recherche du temps perdu the summer between high school and starting GT, struggled to finish this volume (containing the first two of seven parts), and didn't much care for it at all. Then again, those were still highly formative times, where I was trying to drag in as much dif...more...]]> 2 0 false false Thu Oct 16 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Sep 15 08:00:07 -0700 2008 Fri Oct 17 12:52:20 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 05 12:53:48 -0800 2007 Wed Jan 02 12:58:30 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 true false Mon Jun 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 31 09:19:13 -0700 2007 Mon Jun 22 15:08:26 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=190576