Jonathan’s Comments (group member since Oct 24, 2013)

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

Renato wrote: "I haven't read that one. How... strangely yet interestingly weird!"

I think that somes up Vonnegut's work...and very humane!

I just like the quote because it just tries to pose the question, in Vonnegut's flippant way, 'what if there were more to sexual reproduction than heterosexual coupling?' and 'is there an evolutionary point to homosexuality, bisexuality? etc.'

Proust will be approaching from a different angle but I get the sense that it will be just as illuminating, and maybe also a bit strange. :-)

Marcelita wrote: "Proust explores the whole range of sexuality, some which is extremely unsettling (and not the scenes that gather the most press)."

I'm looking forward to this volume, certainly if the first section is indicative of what is to come. That Proust should turn his gaze on sexual relations, rather than just love, is promising.

When thinking on the variety of sexual tastes I often think of this quote from Kurt Vonnegut (from Slaughterhouse-Five) that always amuses me:

One of the biggest moral bombshells handed to Billy by the Tralfamadorians, incidentally, had to do with sex on Earth. They said their flying-saucer crews had identified no fewer than seven sexes on Earth, each essential to reproduction. Again: Billy couldn't possibly imagine what five of those seven sexes had to do with the making of a baby, since they were sexually active only in the fourth dimension.

The Tralfamadorians tried to give Billy clues that would help him imagine sex in the invisible dimension. They told him that there could be no Earthling babies without male homosexuals. There could be babies without female homosexuals. There couldn't be babies without women over sixty-five years old. There could be babies without men over sixty-five. There couldn't be babies without other babies who had lived an hour or less after birth. And so on.

It was gibberish to Billy.

I am also impressed with the wealth of knowledge and information that you share with us, Marcelita. I look at some as I go, but I also hope to revisit others once I've finished the novel. So please keep those. posts coming!

Re: the announcement.

I was too busy being amused at the narrator's bashfulness at being announced loudly by the doorman. Although he says it was because he wasn't sure if he'd been the victim of a hoax, I suspect it was also because he didn't have a title.

BTW In my preliminary reading I probably read too many spoilers, so I know what the narrator's real name is, it's....

Renato: Did you notice another mention of the narrator's duel(s)? This was when he was trying to get the nerve to go across the courtyard and spy on Charlus & Jupien:

'A fine thing,' I thought, 'that I should be more pusillanimous when the theatre of operations is merely our own courtyard and when the only steel I, who have just fought several duels without any fear, on account of the Dreyfus Affair, have to fear is that of the neighbours' gaze, who have better things to do than stare into the courtyard'

Well, we know they were over the Dreyfus Affair now, anyway.

I notice that we're soon back in the soirees again. Although they're a good way of having the characters interact and reveal info about each other, I hope we don't get too many of them in this vol.

Baron Charlus reminds me of Joe Orton as described in his own diaries: The Orton Diaries. Not just his homosexuality, but the fact that they're both brash, arrogant even; but they know what they want and aren't ashamed of it. Although Charlus has to be more circumspect than Orton.

The first section of this week's reading was quite remarkable. Not only does he open with the narrator spying on a homosexual fling but, as we'd expect from Proust we get a nuanced explanation of homosexuality as at the beginning of the twentieth century.

I agree that the quotes listed so far superb. But I would also like to add this convoluted, but perfectly understandable, quote where the narrator is explaining some subtle differences between homosexual 'types'. Although it's not so much a 'type' as the different ways that they have to arrange their lives to conform:

But the second kind seek out the women who love women, who can procure a young man for them and add to the pleasure which they get from finding themselves with him; much more, they can, in the same way, find the same pleasure with them as with a man. [...] For in the relationships they have with them, they play the role of another woman for the women who love women, and the woman offers them at the same time more or less what they find in a man, so that the jealous friend suffers from feeling that the man he loves is inseparable from the woman who is for him almost a man, at the same time as he feels him almost escaping from him, because, for these women, he is something he does not know, a sort of woman.

Marcelita wrote: "This section contains Proust's longest sentence.
Via Jim Everett's Proust Reader:
http://libraryschool.libguidescms.com......"

True Proustians love long sentences! Size does matter. :-)

Renato wrote: "I felt the same recently when reading Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, this sense of being kind of lost, but then after some pages, everything was ok. Is it improving reading skills or adjusting to the author's style of writing? ."

I know what you mean about getting used to an author's style. I was going to start S&G today but I'd only finished Life and Fate yesterday and, after all the Proustian reading, I felt that I'd had to de-Proust my mind as 'Life and Fate' was written in a Soviet-approved style which is almost the opposite of such a 'decadent western writer' such as Proust. I now have to re-Proustialise my brain before I can start again. I often find it difficult to start a book that's completely different from the preceding one - a sort of reading inertia.

Renato, My Ulysses reading method was basically this: first of all decide where the different chapters are - the chapter positions aren't always obvious but there can be a complete shift in subject and style. So I treated each chapter as a separate novel almost and tried to read it one or two chunks. Once I'd read the chapter and allowed time to digest what I could I then read some notes (from various sources) to find out all the things that I should have noticed but probably didn't. I didn't worry too much about not understanding it but only read a chapter when I was in the mood for it.

At first I tried to read it fast thinking I could get through it quickly - that was my big mistake - mind you it only took about 5 weeks in total.

Re: times & dates. In an earlier post I mentioned that it was mentioned at the Guermantes shindig that King Edward was mentioned. This means that Queen Victoria was dead, i.e. 1901 or after. This didn't quite match with the comment (I believe, though I'll have to check this) at the Villeparisis do that that the Zola trial was ongoing - that was 1898. Proust treats time quite fluidly though that I'd have to check these.

I find the comments on each person's reading style fascinating as I think it's crucial for certain books. I read Ulysses last year, and I'd tried it before and failed, but once I found a method of reading it that worked for me then I actually enjoyed it.

The same applies with Proust, although I use a slightly different method. I'm a slow-ish reader anyway, at least I'm not very good at blasting my way through a book, even a relatively simple one, so I take my time reading, about 30 pages at a time, as I find my concentration starts to slip if I try to read more. I can then do the weekly reading usually in one day at the weekend in two installments. I find if I have the time and I feel that I'd benefit from it then I sometimes re-read some or all of the previous week's material before advancing on to the next week's material. Sunny-in-Wonderland does the exact opposite and loves blasting through the book in a couple of weeks, which is impressive, but impossible for me.

Personally I don't like audiobooks too much as the narrator is usually too much of a distraction and I feel that I don't concentrate as much. However your method, Dave, of combining the audiobook with the actual book may work for me but only if I struggled with the real book.

I find I now consciously pay attention to what point he's making when he does one of his asides so that I don't have to track back later on to find out what he was going on about. I think reading Proust has improved my reading skills, which is good. Any symbolism, however, just passes me by I'm afraid. Even when it's pointed out to me I often feel that the author didn't intend it and it's just the reader that has projected their thoughts on to the book - but that's a known blind spot for me.

Coloured highlights wouldn't help me at all but I'm glad they work for you Dave. :-)

The Rougon-Macquart series of 20 novels is superb. There's not a duff one amongst them though some are better than others. It was my 'big reading project' before I started Proust. If you're interested you may want to check out the blog http://readingzola.wordpress.com - I've contributed a few posts to it. There's also a GR group currently reading the whole series I believe. You may want to wait until Proust is out of the way though or you won't have anytime to do anything else. :-)

Renato wrote: "I'm now reading a compilation of Zola's articles and letters from that period about the affair. He was pretty involved and sure of Dreyfus's innocence. There is one in which he even says something along the lines that in the name of all of his work and his career, Dreyfus is innocent. "

I shall probably read J'accuse tomorrow as for some reason I haven't read it so far.

Zola's last novel, which was published posthumously, was a thinly disguised version of the Dreyfus Affair set in a Catholic school. I haven't read it but it's not supposed to be that good - it's called 'Verite' or 'Truth' in English. There's still so much more Zola that I want to read though that it will have to take its place at the end of the queue.

I found a Zola website that has loads of photographs of the Second Dreyfus trial at Rennes: see here. n.b. the penultimate photo shows the line of soldiers that lined the court steps when Dreyfus left.

Renato wrote: "One thing I missed though was accounts on his faith in God, in his religion. I wanted to know if he was sure God would in some way intervene or if all the injustice would be dealt with later, not in this life, as is a common thought for most religious people. And also if his faith diminished, if he felt he had been forgotten by God etc.. "

I don't think he was particularly religious, if at all. The anti-Drefusyards would highlight his Jewishness but religion as such didn't seem to take up much of his time; he was committed to the French army and the secular state.

On page 135, when Dreyfus was on Devil's Island, PPR states that 'Dreyfus never lost his wholly secular outlook: even in the depths of despair, he never had recourse to any of the consolations offered by religious belief. The ideals which sustained him were secular: Truth, Justice, Honour, Courage, Loyalty, Duty.'

Renato wrote: "How do you feel about some of the Dreyfusards, like Lazare, blaming Dreyfus for accepting the pardon and saying he was only trying to save his own skin and not to help the Jewish cause?
"

It's difficult reading this from a 21st Century viewpoint, where we know all the facts and live in a different world, to fully accept the pardon; i.e. that Dreyfus should accept that he's guilty of a crime that he didn't commit and for the military to get off scott-free. But, given that the army missed their last chance, with the second court martial, to close the case with some sort of honour, I can see that the compromise of the pardon was a brilliant political move - unsatisfactory to Dreyfus and the Dreyfusards but a way out of the deadlock that French society found itself in; and a way to defuse the immediate tensions.

It was revealing that Dreyfus's immediate reaction was to refuse the pardon but he quickly came round to the compromise position. I think, given the circumstances, he made the correct decision, both personally and for France.

As for Lazare, it's understandable that he'd be annoyed by the pardon, but then he hadn't lived on Devil's Island for five years with the prospect of spending ten more years in prison.

Do you believe Dreyfus made the correct decision, Renato?

'Germinal' is brilliant as are so many of Zola's books - but I'm a big fan of Zola so I'm biased.

OMG! I thought when Cavaignac became War Minister that he would slowly reveal the truth. But no, it's even worse! He's hellbent on destroying the Dreyfusards and if possible taking them all to court for treason. But he has released the forged documents...

There is a book by Zola's English publisher, Vizetelly that documents Zola's time in England when he fled France: With Zola in England A Story of Exile. It doesn't add anything to the Dreyfus case but is interesting to see how, even in England, Zola had to remain undercover.