Amanda Baker
I’d like to say I will be completing Marcel Proust’s epic volumes. But, having read volume 1 ‘Swann’s Way’ and volume II ‘Within a Budding Grove’ a few summers ago, following a magazine supplement recommendation by Will Self, I’d rather chew nettles washed down with fermented ants’ wee. And if I ever meet Self I hope he has bunions cos I will stamp on his toes – hard.
400 pages on the path outside Proust’s house (the effete Proust -thinly disguised as the effete Swann) And that’s just for starters. I mean – I know life was slower paced back then but good lord - ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’ indeed.
It is as pointless dissing the classics as it is to complain that a 1950s movie is sexist (on the other hand so are a lot of modern movies and there is no excuse!) Everything has its place. Some books manage true transcendence and I will consider myself lucky if I get to re-re-read Don Quixote and/or Anna Karenina again in my life.
However, if anyone comes near me with a copy of Proust – watch out. I may not be armed or dangerous but I have my limits…
400 pages on the path outside Proust’s house (the effete Proust -thinly disguised as the effete Swann) And that’s just for starters. I mean – I know life was slower paced back then but good lord - ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’ indeed.
It is as pointless dissing the classics as it is to complain that a 1950s movie is sexist (on the other hand so are a lot of modern movies and there is no excuse!) Everything has its place. Some books manage true transcendence and I will consider myself lucky if I get to re-re-read Don Quixote and/or Anna Karenina again in my life.
However, if anyone comes near me with a copy of Proust – watch out. I may not be armed or dangerous but I have my limits…
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