Barry’s Comments (group member since Nov 25, 2019)

Barry’s comments from the #ClassicsCommunity 2021 Reading Challenge group.

Ashley wrote: "How interesting that this thread got revived. I wasn’t in a place where I wanted to read this last year, but I just started it with a different group yesterday! So far it’s a smooth read, so I’m wa..."

So glad to see somebody still reading this thread. I haven't posted since June, 2020 because it looked like I was whispering in the dark.
Proust can be confusing. He requires a lot of attention in parts. Sometimes I would run out of air when I found myself on the second or third page of a long sentence. I would have to surface for air, find the beginning of it again, and start all over knowing I had to be prepared for 12 digressions and 8 levels of subordinate clauses. I thought it nearly a cubist writing style. Think of Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase. Now imagine that instead of seeing an abstraction of the nude at successive moments in time, we see many different people, each descending different staircases at widely separated moments of time. Frequently that's how Proust sees and wants us to see.
Again, I recommend Patrick Alexander's book as an excellent companion read. I read the introduction and then the rest as I read Proust, reading his summaries of each volume before I read that volume. (Don't worry about spoilers! It's not that kind of book.) Just before the last volume, I read Alexander's last synopsis of that volume and the rest of his book (with the review of characters, etc.). There are a lot of balls in the air. It can help to track them.
If you're not familiar with French history, it would be a good idea to read the appropriate Wikipedia articles as needed covering the history of France from the Revolution through WWI, including, especially, the Dreyfus Affair.
Enjoy!

Well, this thread appears thoroughly dark by now, but, for whatever it is worth, I finished In Search of Lost Time just before Christmas. A little later than predicted, but I've been reading other stuff too.
I really liked it, but I can see that it will not appeal to everyone. The entire subject of the book is memory, and how Proust dissects memory and how it defines our life is remarkable. This subject will likely have much more appeal for an older audience. Proust's narrator, like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five, is somewhat unstuck in time. Waking up in his room, he relives waking up in all the other rooms in his life. Each action calls up memories, a linked chain of memories, where many moments in time exist all at once. This works better when you're older and the chains of memories are longer.

Ashley wrote: "I would love to read Tale of the Gengi! I plan to read more Wendell Berry too."
There was a buddy read for the Tale of Genji last year in which I participated. It is a very difficult book. The main difficulty is that it is a thousand years old, set in a culture which is completely alien to us now, and rife with cultural references from its context which must be explained in notes or a companion reading guide. It takes a lot of work, but if you can enter into that world it is very interesting a beautiful. But it is easy to get started and just bounce off. The first thing you will notice is that it is about a bunch of young men, highly privileged poetasters, behaving badly.
By late spring / early summer last year the thread for that buddy read had gone dark. I left the last post on it about 9 months ago. I finished the Tale of Genji in early August last year.
I don't think I want to commit to rereading it again this year (although there is a new edition coming out soon), but I would be happy to discuss it with you as you read it if you like.

Finally finishing The Tale of Genji. Rereading The Iliad and The Odyssey. This time in the Fagles’ translation.

A. Winnie the Pooh

Hi Victoria. We seem to have differing viewpoints on “tangents”, which is fine. Good in fact. It makes for more interesting discussions.
In this case, I think it would be more profitable to postpone our discussion on that subject until we have finished the book. We’ll have a better idea of Dostoyevsky’s purpose when we can look back on the book as a whole, which might affect our opinions about how certain tangents fit in. I’m sure we will continue to have different perspectives since approach the book with different objectives and relate it to different life experiences. Stay healthy and safe.

I have been following this discussion only intermittently and not exactly following the reading schedule, getting distracted by many other books. I first (and last) read this book in the Spring of 1970 while visiting my father a few times a day during his terminal illness. So it always had bittersweet associations for me. Having read it over 50 years ago, all I remembered was Zossima’s body decomposing, the Grand Inquisitor, and that I liked it.
I read 5-10 chapters in early March, got distracted, picked it up again in late May, had to start over again, and finished it May 31. Enjoyed it very much. Probably picked up a lot more of the literary allusions (e.g., Schiller, Bible) this time than I did in my youth.
That being said, without being too specific, I would urge not to be overly concerned with the plot. It has an engaging plot on many levels, including some real Agatha Christie moments, but the plot is not really what the book is mainly about. The plot in this book is sort of the picture frame around the painting. The real action is in the gradual revealing of the characters, especially when they choose to tell us who they are, and their relationships as they evolve. The “tangents” are major elements of the painting. Eliminating those distractions you’d be left just holding the frame.

I finished Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Max Shulman’s The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
As might be imagined, I read them all for different reasons, so picking a favorite seems silly. Whenever anybody asks me what my favorite beer is, I give one of two answers. If I have a beer in my hand, the answer is, “The one in my hand.” Otherwise the answer is, “Something wonderful I’ve never had before.”

Hi Krisztina,
I just finished Orlando last night.
I enjoyed it so much that I ordered another copy, annotated and with an introduction by Maria DiBattista. It is a book which can be read on many levels.
First, which is the way I read it in high school, is simply as pure fantasy. A joke.
Second, there is the social and literary commentary.
Then there is also the fact that it is a fictionalized biography of Vita Sackville-West. Kind of an inside joke for the Bloomsbury Group. I got the annotated version to help me pick apart those references.
I love how it starts out, portraying the Elizabethan Age as kind of an over-saturated photograph, which might be how many of us experienced adolescence. After one gets into it a little way, one also realizes how fluid the timelines for the characters are. The world is on one timeline, at first mainly marked by the reigns of the English monarchs. Orlando is on another timeline where we are explicit told Orlando's age at certain points. Later on it becomes apparent that other characters have their own timelines, generally in between the first two.
I'll quit now so I don't spoil it any more for you. Let me know what you're thinking as you progress.

Anytime you want. I already have Woolf’s Complete Novels on my Kindle and read about the first 10 pages this morning. I also put a hold on an annotated copy at the library which should appear in about 4 weeks for a loan period of 3 weeks. So I’ll have to finish the annotated version by the end of July or so. Knowing myself, I find Orlando such delightful reading that I will probably finish the version I already have before the library copy is available. So I will probably be ahead of you.
Post your progress and I will reply, trying not to provide spoilers.

Timár_Krisztina wrote: "I must admit that I missed the start date, mostly because I wasn't able to finish the monstrous classic (Gargantua and Pantagruel) that I had started in January. But I'm still interested in Orlando..."

Hi Krisztina!
There doesn't seem to be a lot of activity on this thread. I read Orlando back when I was in high school (1966, outside of class), loved it, have probably reread it a couple times since, though not in a long time. I also remember dragging my wife to see the movie when it came out around 1992. It's a little more nostalgic now because one of my high school classmates, John, who was in my English class and I used to hang around with a lot, is now Joanna. Who knew back then that he/she would live out that story arc?
I'd be delighted to reread it and discuss with you. I have a couple of other monstrous classics I am reading now, but it's fairly short, so I can easily slip it into my reading. Besides, I have all of Virginia Woolf on my reading list (along with thousands of other books).

I notice this thread has gone dark.
I finished Swann's Way on February 23, but haven't posted my review yet, and haven't started on Within A Budding Grove yet.
I'll post my review soon, but probably not start the next book until toward the end of the month.

I had tried to read Swann's Way a couple of times before, but got distracted or confused. The most recent time was about 6 years ago, when my wife and I were in Paris and I was not feeling well. I got kind of confused by the segue to Swann In Love.
This time I paid more attention to the narrator. The narrator is, in Vonnegut's phrase, unstuck in time. One needs to pay close attention to what time he is talking about. He says so in the text, but temporal transitions are sometimes easy to miss if one is not paying close attention. For most of the first part it is clear that the narrator is in later life, calling up memories from his early youth, sometimes prompted by occurrences in his current life.
What becomes confusing when we get to Swann In Love is that he is describing events that happened well before he was born. There does not seem to be any explanation for how the narrator knows about these events, particularly when he delves into the interior monologues of multiple characters in various scenes. Even in Swann In Love, the narrator occasionally refers to himself in his current time (later life). We just have to accept his omniscience about events and people's motivations from a time before he was born, paying close attention to the ever shifting timeline. Perhaps this will be explained in later books.
After Swann In Love, the timeline shifts are easier to track, being to different points in his life.

I have also been reading Patrick Alexander's Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time, which is sort of a reader's guide to the series, and which I have found helpful. These are not really plot driven books, so I'm not at all worried about spoilers. I'm more worried about losing the thread of what's going on when reading some of Proust's multiple page sentences. I find them easier to track when I have a clear view from the 10,000 foot level.

The world has changed a lot since the last post on this thread. I hope everyone is staying safe and that you and all your loved ones are healthy.

I notice this thread seems to have gone dark.
I'm still reading, thought I'm admittedly behind the pace in Marissa's first post: I just finished Chapter 13 today. But I actually hope to get through it ahead of schedule, perhaps by the end of June, more likely by the end of July.
I've been using two references that help make sense out of the alien world in which this book is set: (1) The Tale of Genji: A Readers Guide, by William J. Puette and (2) The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan, by Ivan Morris.
Is there anybody else still with us?
Are you enjoying the book?
What difficulties are you having with the book?
If you have given up on the book (but are still following this thread), why did you decide to quit reading?

The world has changed quite a bit since the last post on this thread. I hope everyone is staying safe and that you and all your loved ones are healthy.

Finally finished. The last book certainly was different. Almost more like Robert Howard in its descriptions.

Love the frozen words.
That’s what all writing and books are about.
The author’s writing freezes words onto the page; the reader’s reading melts them and makes them speak.

Timár_Krisztina wrote: "I'm reading Le Quart Livre. In fact, I've read two thirds of it already. And I can tell you it's much, MUCH better than the previous one. It's much more of a fantasy, or rather a parody of fantasie..."
I'm working on it too. I'm only about 1/3 of the way through right now. I have another library book I have to finish in the next two days, but I should finish Le Quart Livre in the next week or so.
Definitely more variety in this book. Reminding me some of the last half of Gulliver's Travels.

Timár_Krisztina wrote: "I finished Le Tiers Livre yesterday. God, I thought it would never end.
I didn't like it half as much as the first two books. It was pretty good, but definitely not a fantasy novel, and also diffi..."
I too finished the third book a little over a week ago and had a similar reaction. It droned on and on. Panurge keeps asking the same question and getting the same answer he doesn't like, so he asks somebody else, and on and on. When you deliver a joke, you can do three variations to build tension before getting to the punch line, but you better deliver the punch line at the end of the third variation. Otherwise, your audience will wander off. I lost track of how many time Panurge was told he would be a cuckold. But it was more than three. My mind kept wanting to wander off.
I'll be getting to Book Four by the end of the month. As usual, I reading at least a half a dozen things at the same time. The eBooks that I have from the library that had long wait lists I have to finish before they are due or put them on hold again or buy them. So sometimes the Rabelais has a lower priority, but I seem to be keeping to the book a month pace.
I'm really enjoying the Penguin Classics English edition translated by M.A. Screech. It's well annotated, which is really helpful.
Stay safe and healthy Krisztina.

I’m running a little behind too on Swann’s Way. I’m about 30% through and will probably finish it in a couple of weeks, rather than next week.

Krisztina — The Ship from Lucian is fairly short (less than 30 minutes to read) and it’s connection is obvious. The notes in my edition suggest that Pyrrhus from Plutarch was also an inspiration. I didn’t get to it because it’s much longer and it seemed like only a small part was going to be relevant.

Krisztina — I finished Gargantua yesterday. I also read Lucian’s The Ship to go along with Chapter 31 (or 33, depending on your edition). One can really see how Rabelais was inspired by Lucian.
I am enjoying the much more than I did when I was 16 or 17. I get the classical allusions now with a well annotated edition and 50+ more years of reading under my belt; before, they were just noise.