Andree’s Comments (group member since Feb 02, 2014)

Andree’s comments from the Reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time in 2014 group.

Most chronologies are pure conjecture and, considering, that Proust himself didn't seem too concerned with it, "killing" some of his characters and ressuscitating them afterwards, I don't think that we should either.
I think it all matters very little. If Albertine is Agostinelli's alter ego, their affair obviously took place later (1907-08), which would be coherent with the narrator being thirtyish.
But I still don't get how speculating on the age of the narrator can be a spoiler.

And he might very well have been, considering that he was no youngster when he wrote La recherche. The character of the narrator himself might have been that of a young man, but seen through the eyes of more mature self.

Renato wrote: "Dave wrote: "Gonna get mysterious again on you Renato, answering your question is a major spoiler."

That's certainly intriguing..."

I don't see how speculating on the age of the narrator could be a "major spoiler", considering that Proust was less of a stickler for dates and chronological details. However, if we identify the narrator with Marcel himself, the latter being born in 1879, he would be about 22 at the time he features himself in "The Captive", the novel being situated in 1901 approximately.
See chronology in French at:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronolo...

Yes, it is true that you might want to read it all over again. After that first hurdle, that's exactly what I did. You won't regret it.

Sunny in Wonderland wrote: ":) Out of the frying pan... and into the fire?"

Something like that. But perhaps it's just me...

Sunny in Wonderland wrote: "Oh, no! I was somehow hoping that volume would get us out of this party rut..."

It will! It will take you from Charybdis to Scylla!

Wait till you get to "Sodom and Gomorrah", that's where it really got painful and that I decided to take a break. That break lasted more than ten years, until I finally got the fortitude to pick up the book again and finish it. Hope it doesn't happen to you.

Sunny in Wonderland wrote: "Based on Google, I think you're right on track. I don't know how to convey the section it is in other than that it was part of the reading for week ending May 31st. But, it was during the convers..."

Okay, I found it! Proust uses the expression "petit truqueur" which, in the language of that time meant a male prostitute or rent boy.

Marcelita wrote: "Jonathan wrote: "I'm just thinking about adding some more bookshelves as it seems quite popular. I'm thinking of adding the following shelves:
-'Proust ISOLT' i.e. the books scheduled to read this ..."

And how about painting?

If you let me know in what section is that expression, I'll check in the French version and try to find what a "rent boy" would be in French. My feeling is that it might be someone you would pay for particular services...

Thanks for the links. I am really enjoying Dr. Taylor's lectures. "Poor obsessive", uh? My husband used to say that Marcel was sleeping between us! Not sure that would have been to Marcel's taste, but there was some truth to that...

Interesting that Prout, a great admirer of Ruskin and certainly knowing his feelings about Whistler would then combine, among others, elements of Whistler and Turner in the character of Elstir whose name, incidentally, is a loose anagram of Whistler.

Sunny in Wonderland wrote: ""...we seem then to absent ourselves for a few hours from Time..."
"...to have slept for any time is an even stronger narcotic..."
"...in which I could reach my watch and confront with its time tha..."

There doesn't seem to be much written about that topic, at least I didn't find much.
However, I would humbly submit that Time capitalized is the true hero of La recherche. Time in the absolute, that swallows and destroys and leaves its mark on everyone and everything, Time against which the narrator struggles throughout the novel to recuperate fragments of his life, of his memories and in the end to wrestle away from It the secret and true meaning of his own life.
Time without a capital would represent the other, banal dimension of time: time to get up, to have a cup of tea, to get from point A to point B.

Stephen wrote: "In my Flammarion, it's all jammed together in massive paragraphs. That's why I prefer reading it on the Kindle or apps. You can blow up the writing and not be daunted by that blocks of gray."

Isn't that strange...I have two other Gallimard editions and the dialogues are the same as in La Pléiade which, I believe, must be the most faithful to Proust's original text.
I guess Flammarion must be hurting...
I cannot imagine reading dialogues all bunched up like that. Proust is already difficult enough to read as it is.

Stephen wrote: "I think they're just sticking closer to what Proust does in French. Quotes run together all the time, and you have to scrutinize symbols like this -- to figure out who's talking. Sometimes I realiz..."

As I am checking in La Pléiade's version of La recherche, I notice that the dialogues' punctuation corresponds to the MKE version rather than the Penguin's, meaning: quotation marks, hyphens and a change of line for each speaker. No space between quotes though.
That might not be the case for all French versions though and, as Stephen says, saving paper and money might very well be the issue.

Jonathan wrote: "Ok, so I decided to read the Penguin translations instead of the MKE translation as the Penguin ones looked more readable. Before I switched I did notice that dialogue was indicated with a hyphen (..."

As a book editor, I'll certainly agree with you that the Penguin version has a very odd way to punctuate dialogue.

Stephen wrote: "I think clearing that brushwood would have a lot to do with it. But I'm enjoying the French in a conscious way that I never do with my native English. I'm getting kicks out of bits of grammar and v..."

Yes, that's amusing! You probably feel the same wonderment that is mine when I read Spanish and see the subjunctive so beautifully conjugated...
Proust's writing, even for a French native speaker, is anything but banal. He sometimes teeters on the verge of proper syntax. I forget who accused him of that, perhaps Gide? And thank God for the past subjunctive to be on its way out: it took me a moment to figure at what "parlasse meant exactly, (some unorthodox way of speaking? some overdrawn discourse?).
I always say that to speak or write French correctly you do have to be a bit of a virtuoso, you cannot possibly start a sentence on the wrong footing, catch yourself up and correct the sentence as you go along. It seems to me that English is more forgiving in that sense, but it might be because I am less conscious of my mistakes in English than in French.

Stephen wrote: "Hi everyone, I'm Steve. Just joined the group. I'm a writer, I live in Montclair, NJ. Blog is TheNumerati.net
I started reading Proust in the mid-90s. I found individual paragraphs and sentences st..."

Welcome to the group!
Strangely so, I first read La recherche in French (that's my mother tongue) and later did a few incursions in Moncrieff's translation finding, in my case, the translated text to be somewhat more limpid. But perhaps was it because of the initial clearing of brushwood in French.

Jonathan wrote: "Sunny in Wonderland wrote: "There is much debate as to how great a bearing Proust's sexuality has on understanding these aspects of the novel..."

Even if most of his contemporary readers wouldn't ..."

By the time one gets to "Sodome et Gomorrhe", no possible doubt can be left in the mind of the reader, whether or not he/she is homosexual.
However, the first time I read it I was very young and had no idea what he could possibly be talking about...

Stephen wrote: "I was telling my 21-year-old son about how weepy the narrator was, and how I'd never write about such things, and he said: "Why not?" And I started to come to grips with the dishonesty in much of w..."

Ant that's precisely what makes Proust such a great author: his ability to analyse human emotions (starting with his own) and to write about them in all honesty is such that every reader can recognize his own and feel "that's exactly it! how is it that I could never put it into words?" Truth is what makes the difference between remarkable and lasting literature and mediocre writing.