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

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

Kalliope wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: ":) @Ce Ce and J.A.

I discovered this Libyan Author, Hisham Matar yesterday and some comments he made on you tube about reading Proust. I loved what he said about how..."

No worries, we'll keep you to ourselves.

I'll just leave this here as well:


The Writing Life: The point of the long and winding sentence


Pico Iyer says writing longer phrases is a way to protest the speed of information bites people are subjected to each day.

January 08, 2012|By Pico Iyer, Special to the Los Angeles Times


"Your sentences are so long," said a friend who teaches English at a local college, and I could tell she didn't quite mean it as a compliment. The copy editor who painstakingly went through my most recent book often put yellow dashes on-screen around my multiplying clauses, to ask if I didn't want to break up my sentences or put less material in every one. Both responses couldn't have been kinder or more considered, but what my friend and my colleague may not have sensed was this: I'm using longer and longer sentences as a small protest against — and attempt to rescue any readers I might have from — the bombardment of the moment.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/...

"Enter (I hope) the long sentence: the collection of clauses that is so many-chambered and lavish and abundant in tones and suggestions, that has so much room for near-contradiction and ambiguity and those places in memory or imagination that can't be simplified, or put into easy words, that it allows the reader to keep many things in her head and heart at the same time, and to descend, as by a spiral staircase(KALLIOPE'S), deeper into herself and those things that won't be squeezed into an either/or. With each clause, we're taken further and further from trite conclusions — or that at least is the hope — and away from reductionism, as if the writer were a dentist, saying "Open wider" so that he can probe the tender, neglected spaces in the reader (though in this case it's not the mouth that he's attending to but the mind).

:) @Ce Ce and J.A.

I discovered this Libyan Author, Hisham Matar yesterday and some comments he made on you tube about reading Proust. I loved what he said about how reading Proust rewires our brain. This triggered memory of one of those Great Courses: Building Great Sentences that I started maybe ten years ago. (Never finished of course). There must have been some reference to Proust's sentences there which would not have resonated with me then as I had not read him. I will have to watch the series again. I do remember however, a reference to Don DeLillo's long sentences, and of course he was a great influence on David Foster Wallace and must have influences him in formulating his own long sentences, and I think we can credit Proust's influence on their writing.

Great sentences start with Proust!

Anyway, here is Hisham Matar on Proust: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQlmnP...

Ce Ce wrote: Reading Proust, so far, has confirmed for me how much time we can waste in habitual activity or obsessions (whatever form those obsessions take)...a day, a week, a month, a year frittered

Sounds like great advice! Don't you find that while reading, we are continuously dredging up memories as our mind wanders while reading? I always feel that there is a parallel mind track going on as I read the words on the page that set off all sorts of thoughts and memories, conjured from the reading material which probably explains why I am such a slow reader.

Richard wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "The Curse of Reading and Forgetting:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs..."
I am enjoying ISOLT now but I am su..."


I agree Richard, it will be the same for all of us. I read this quote this morning which ties in with this:


"A lot of people think I'm very well read because I quote all these sources and they're reasonable quotations. They're not hokey. They're not pulled out. And I keep telling them, 'I'm not particularly well read. I just don't forget anything.'

I'm not badly read – I'm just sort of an average intellectual in that respect – but the thing is, I can use everything I've ever read. Most people cannot do that. They'll probably access just a couple of percent of what they have. So, therefore, when they see me citing so much they assume I have fifty times more but I don't. I'm using a hundred percent of what I have. They're using two percent of what they have."

(http://www.brainpickings.org/index.ph...)

Ce Ce wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "I have a feeling that I'm going to be kicked out of the lounge, but the instinct to share is too strong for me to resist. I came across this word "Viennoiserie" looked..."

I got it from this article: Breakfast with the FT: Sir John Richardson

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/37a0775e-c2...

lol Kalliope, I'm just waiting for your birthday!!!
Thanks J.A. for the links!

I have a feeling that I'm going to be kicked out of the lounge, but the instinct to share is too strong for me to resist. I came across this word "Viennoiserie" looked it up and here it is:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viennois...

Kalliope's favorite!

Sharing this one just because so many of our favorite authors and artists have committed suicide:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek...

Another one: Canon Fodder: Denouncing the Classics

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs...

Kalliope wrote: "Having just read the section with the blooming pear trees, and longing for the definite arrival of spring, I just had to post some of these beautiful trees.



and the flower..

I have the same pear trees in my front lawn, and they are gorgeous in bloom and ever so fragrant. Ienjoyed the section about the trees because our trees bloomed late this year, May instead of April and I could of course see them!

"

The Curse of Reading and Forgetting:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs...

Proustitute wrote: "Kind of you to share, ReemK. Berfrois should be publishing a more Proust-specific centenary piece which they asked me to weigh in on. More on that when it appears."

How could I resist? All of us here love discovering the world of books and the larger meaning behind them. For someone like you that lives and makes a living off exploring this world, you bring it closer to us by explaining the meaning behind the words. We 'll look forward to the piece on Proust.

I'm so glad that you like the links I share!!! Cheers :)

Marcelita wrote:
"I can always tell when a non-reader is the art director...the books are "not loved with a place mark."

I liked that one as well. As for the book, there are courtly book lovers who idealize their books and carnal lovers of books that inflict violence on the books they read. This one looks carnal.

Another article to share. This one from our very own Proustitute:

http://www.berfrois.com/2013/05/k-tho...

"He even extends this further, positing Auschwitz as a memory trigger much in the same way Proust’s madeleine was for him:"

Another article to share. This one about making small talk, and you can consider it within the context of dialogue in the novel:

http://www.thepointmag.com/2013/revie...

I had to share these reading rooms with you:

http://flavorwire.com/392332/incredib...

Jack wrote: "Strange, Lydia Davis fell flat for me; I had to go back to Moncrieff. "

Flat? Flat? How can that be? There were some passages, that after reading them I wanted to break out in song!

Jocelyne wrote: "Last night, I just started reading Céleste Albaret's Mr. Proust and I find it hard to put down. What a stirring, wistful account. I have barely started and I find myself already blurring the bounda..."

That is interesting. I just love trivia like that. I wonder if the taps had a certain beat to them. Maybe she was just aware of the taps in that volume or that they may have had a different significaance to them later on. Were they Morse code to someone special? we'll have to wait to find out.

As for the musicality of the language and your own experience speaking 6 languages, it must be very hard to reproduce the original in a different language, and yet I find translated works are always so enjoyable to read.

Jocelyne wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Ce Ce wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Makes one respect what Proust was able to do with his narrator.

"Memory cre..."

Thank you Jocelyne! That is reassuring! I have no musical background except for taking a class once to learn how to play the sitar. I find however that when reading a well written book, even though one is reading in one's head, you still pick up on a melody, a wave, that you can ride, not unlike a bird that rides an air current and just lets it carry it away. This melody I hear is like the bliss that I felt reading the Lydia Davis translation of Swann's Way where the words are just so musical and so poetic. You're all readers that are hypersensitive to the effect of words, I'm sure you know what I mean.