ReemK10 (Paper Pills)’s Comments (group member since Dec 26, 2012)

ReemK10 (Paper Pills)’s comments from the The Year of Reading Proust group.

Polly wrote: "Proustitute wrote: "JANUARY
Sunday, 6 Jan: Swann's Way, to page 64 in ML edition / page 48 in the LD translation (through Combray, Part I)
Sunday, 13 Jan: Swann's Way, to page 139 in ML / page 102..."

Welcome to the group Polly! Feel free to comment in the appropriate section threads as you read along, and we will check on you there.

Proustitute wrote:
Agreed. No one should feel that reading Proust is a chore. I..."


I don't think it will be an issue. We will all support one another and check on the previous week's/weeks' threads to continue whatever conversations are there. So far, it has been great camaraderie, and we're enjoying each other's company. Happy reading!

Aloha wrote: "Welcome, Tony! Looks like you've pretty much got it figured out this time around. I agree that we don't need another schedule. It will just make everything more confusing, since this forum is so..."

Good to see you in here Aloha!

Kalliope wrote:
just post in the sections as one proceeds.. Even those of us who, so far, are managing the pace, keep looking back at earlier threads.


Kalliope, I think that is excellent advice. There is no need to have people feeling rushed in their reading or feel bad that they have fallen behind. At one point, I felt like it was homework, and I needed to be done before the start of class on Monday! I think that like you said, we do read back, so people should just post in the threads when they are ready. I've tried to avoid reading the threads until I've finished a section because I hate reading about something before I've gotten there, then I find I have like 60 posts to catch up on! I'm sure that 2014 will have us ALL going back to reread the threads of 2013: the year of reading Proust!

This looks like a good read:

Proust, Blanchot and a Woman in Red
Lydia Davis

"Following her acclaimed translation of Swann’s Way, Lydia Davis offers a partial alphabet of Proust translation problems – and their solutions. She muses on the near-impossibility of summarising works by Maurice Blanchot, and ends with a group of short narratives that explore the space between dream and waking reality. This cahier is a wondrous adventure into the perils and delights of translating, of reading – and of dreaming. "


http://www.sylpheditions.com/Cahiers/...

Kalliope wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "

Just peeking in, Kalliope it seems that you're the only one who has started this next section."

Reem, are you on schedule?.. I know several people are a bit behind...."

I haven't started this week's section because I'm trying to catch up on BB. Still, it is only Tuesday, so at this point I'm optimistic I'll get both readings done. :) Switching between authors requires adjustment each time.

Kalliope wrote: "Wonderful article.. and our dear Proust, and readers of Proust are mentioned.

When it comes to other people, can you be confident that your intelligent, socially attuned and generous friend who re..."

Nice article! It's all true, but truthfully we read because we must!!!

Kalliope wrote: "In this section I am detecting a new tone, a certain cynicism in the Narrator's voice."

Just peeking in, Kalliope it seems that you're the only one who has started this next section.

I loved the section about the neurotics.

"Everything we think of as great has come from the neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and great works of art. The world will never realise how much it owes to them, and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on us. We enjoy fine music, beautiful pictures, a thousand exquisite things but we do not know what they cost those who wrought them in insomnia, tears, spasmodic laughter, urticaria, asthma, epilepsy, a terror of death which is worse than any of these....." (MKE 414)

So true!

Also loved "the mania for testing their weight!" lol

Historygirl wrote: "Isn't the section on the grandmothers illness a masterpiece within a masterpiece? The section on the grandmother's illness is for me one of the most affecting of ISOLT. I lost my mother this year a..."

I'm sorry to hear about your loss but was pleased that you were able to find some comfort reading Proust. ((Hugs))

"If Proust was a neuroscientist, then you have no urgent need of neuroscience, because you have Proust."

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/11...#

"You have had the effrontery to choose interpretation over calculation...."

·Karen· wrote: Derrida's il n'y a pas de hors-texte. Yes there is. There's us, here.

Fionnuala wrote: We are so 'hors text 'that Derrida would be totally lost.

Kalliope wrote: and the anecdotes and the illustrations snd Patricia's Reality Show...!!!

Lol, lol, funny! I agree that all these books probably should be read because they just make us better readers. Thanks Karen for the video link! I'll have to watch it later though.

Just read this:

"Literature is a performative art and each reading is a performance, analogous to playing/singing a musical work, enacting a drama, etc. Literature exists only when it is read;" ( reader- response criticism)

How validating is this?

"Wolfgang Iser argues that the text in part controls the reader's responses but contains "gaps" that the reader creatively fills."

Kalliope wrote: "I would suggest that as Richard mentions with Cervantes, the preoccupation with the identity of the author/narrator/reader is even older than the 18th century.

During the Baroque times, both in ..."

Yes, I can see how this would include the painter and the sitter as viewer as well.

·Karen· wrote: "I don't think it's considered lazy. It's a legitimate device. Fashion? It was quite fashionable in the Enlightenment to pretend that the writer was addressing a group, like in a salon, or a preache..."

Karen, which of these would you recommend, or is there another that you would suggest I read:

http://www.amazon.com/Toward-Aestheti...

http://www.amazon.com/Aesthetic-Exper...

What I meant about lazy, was instead of the author showing, the author just tells.

I think that this is probably the better book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Act-Reading...

or this: http://www.amazon.com/The-Implied-Rea...

What do you think?

·Karen· wrote: " his term is Erwartungshorizont - horizon of expectation. So he's looking at what kind of common knowledge is presumed in order for people to understand a work. "

This is an interesting concept. It's how I felt about reading Proust, that you need to come to it well read and rather cultured in the arts.

·Karen· wrote:
"I'm not sure if I should consider myself an academic, but don't let's that stop me..."

Thanks Karen, your reply more than satisfies me. I'll have to whip out my notebook to write this all down. Thanks for providing me with names that I will google to learn more. I remembered Tristram Shandy and of course Milan Kundera also played with this form.

I think I'm fond of this author/reader engagement because it is often very playful and can be quite funny. I don't believe an author owes a reader anything. It is up to us to engage with the reading material and to engage actively. It can't be a passive experience but one that when you look up wonder how the world stood still were you sitting there reading.

This is what's great about being part of a group like this, answers at the tip of a click. Thank you :)

For the authors in this group, consider using this technique because readers like me do enjoy it!

Richard wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "I've always been intrigued by writers that speak/refer to their readers in the text, and my knowledge greatly lacking I am only able to attribute this to Denis Diderot..."

Thanks Richard, I haven't read Cervantes yet, but found this quote(Wikipedia) right now: "Cervantes leaves open the pages of a book where the reader knows himself to be written."

Fionnuala, is it really a common literary device? I actually enjoy it because it the book becomes a collaboration between the author and his/her reader. When Proust refers to his reader, of whom is he really thinking? The book is of course written for the larger audience, but the author always has someone in particular in mind. Don't you think so?

For those of you who are academics, why/when is this used as a literary device? Is it considered lazy by any chance?

I'm way behind, trying to catch up, so I haven't read the comments above( for the most part), but I do want to comment about something I've just read with you all.

"The arrival of Madame Swann had a special interest for me, owing to an incident which had occurred a few days earlier and which it is necessary to relate because of the consequences which it was to have at a much later date and which the reader will follow in detail in due course." (MKE 357)

I've always been intrigued by writers that speak/refer to their readers in the text, and my knowledge greatly lacking I am only able to attribute this to Denis Diderot in "Jacques the Fatalist and his Master".

Do any of you know more about this author/reader relationship? How far it goes back? Who first started it? For what end?

And why does Proust/Narrator use it here? Who is using it? Why particularly this incident?

Good to see you Nick.

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