Aloha’s Comments

Aloha’s comments from the The Year of Reading Proust group.

Note: Aloha is not currently a member of this group.

Jocelyne wrote: "I am fully engrossed in Carter's bio of Proust and I feel my admiration, respect and sympathy for Proust growing with every page."

I have that and will read it soon. I'm in the mood for literature right now.

Jocelyne wrote: "Happy Birthday, America!"

Happy Birthday, America!

I hope you're having fun, Kal. They don't gain weight in France. It's better food in small portions.

Regarding the Duchess of Alba, she does look like she enjoys life when you Google photographs of her She seems to enjoy life more now than ever, with her younger man hubby. Here's a picture of her with great legs. Whatever her face may have turned out, all he has to do is look at her legs.

I second the don't delete but you already did. I'm glad I caught it although I didn't have time to comment. I guess she must have liked how she look glancing sideways. That plastic surgery picture is a horror. Yes, it's better to be wrinkly than look like some weird creature from outerspace, although she did look kinda cute with cottonball head and blue accents.

Here is the actor Alan Rickman quoting Proust:

http://youtu.be/MKcRpYtaVIs

I checked out Poetry Genius, Brian. What a terrific way to bring the classics to the current generation! It's nice that it's under Rap Genius, too.

Poetry Genius

Rap Genius

If I wasn't so busy and unreliable in my online life lately, I would participate in this. Maybe it can be a group effort. People can take turns annotating Proust's work.

I'm sorry about your loss, Fionnuala. I hope you'll find some time for yourself to relax and reflect.

I phrased it wrong. I meant that there is a deeper intention than just insulting Proust's work.

Regarding the quote on Proust in Nabokov's Pale Fire, Nabokov's book is a fiction about a discourse on modernism vs. postmodernism. The passages came from two characters, the poet John Shade and the writer John Kinbote. I am going to have to read some criticism on this because there are a lot that went over my head in the content. Poetry is my weak point. I'm sure there's an intention to Nabokov putting in this statement (note that it's not Nabokov's but Kinbote's) regarding Proust beyond being insulting. Kind of like the Marcel in ISOLT is not necessarily Proust himself.

Kalliope wrote: "And a couple of versions by Picasso...

"

Oh, I love the Picassos!

Kalliope wrote: "Kyle wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "When I think of this group, I think of each person bringing to the group the offering of one piece of the puzzle, and together a picture of the whole come..."

LOL! GR have been taking a long time processing posts, so if you keep pushing post, it will repeat this many, as in Kal's 4 repetitions. What I do is push refresh instead, and you'll see your post. When in doubt, copy your post before you "post" it.

While reading Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, I came across this passage.

Proust’s rough masterpiece was a huge, ghoulish fairy tale, an asparagus dream, totally unconnected with any possible people in any historical France, a sexual travestissement and a colossal farce, the vocabulary of genius and its poetry, but no more, impossibly rude hostesses, please let me speak, and even ruder guests, mechanical Dostoevskian rows and Tolstoian nuances of snobbishness repeated and expanded to an unsufferable length, adorable seascapes, melting avenues, no, do not interrupt me, light and shade effects rivaling those of the greatest English poets, a flora of metaphors, described - by Cocteau, I think - as ‘a mirage of suspended gardens,’ and, I have not yet finished, an absurd, rubber-and-wire romance between a blond young blackguard (the fictitious Marcel), and an improbable jeune fille who has a pasted-on bosom...

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Aloha wrote: I don't really have any other vice but a compulsion to ingest information, so I'm going to give in to it.

Give in to it! Relish it! Let it nurture your soul! You'll be the better for it!"

Thanks, Reem!

I started my 2013 Nabokov completist goal today. Then I realized since I finished ISOLT, I only have a few books to be a Proust completist. Here's my list of his work. Are there any more of his wriiting that I need to read?

ISOLT - Read
The Lemoine Affair - Read
The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust - To read
Jean Santeuil: Précédé De Les Plaisirs Et Les Jours - To read
Pleasures and Days - To read
Marcel Proust: On Art and Literature 1896-1919 - to read

I think I have all of these in one form or another.

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "That's so true, but don't you find that sometimes you can't bottle enough? That you keep needing to take in more and more stimuli. "

In my case, yes! I tried to change my ways, but I find it makes me happy to do that. Maybe that's my Prozac, but it suits me. I don't really have any other vice but a compulsion to ingest information, so I'm going to give in to it. I like to pig out on information in an area, then go where and when it suits me.

Thank you, Reem. Reaching out for information, visually or otherwise, fuels our creativity. I make great mental connections that way, from things I've seen or read. Proust and Picasso both developed a wealth of info. with which they reformed to unique construction. Artists often have to hide their work when they see Picasso coming, because he shamelessly utilize their ideas to form his own. If Proust hadn't been a man about town observing people and reading popular literature and news of his time, he would not have been able to form his magnum opus when he became reclusive in his cork-lined room.

Anyhoo, enough on that. I have a tendency to let my enthusiasm spill over wherever I am.

Reem, people do that all the time to get followers. They add them, then drop them. Most people don't even notice. Either that, or they follow a zillion people.

Kal, you would love Pinterest once you get into it. The collection of images people gather from the web is amazing. It's easier than surfing the web for images because a society of Pinterest people have done it for you. It's click, click, click. I can do it for hours! It's a great time spender when you only have a few minutes and can't really do any focusing, like having a convo. or reading/writing reviews.

I will! Thank you, Kal. I love his work.