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2017 Proust Challenge: Book 4 Sodom and Gomorrah
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Charcot was the "real" father of psychiatry - he was the one who first studied Hysteria. Probably he felt he need him much!!!!
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Exactly my idea!
Joan wrote: "I just loved Marcel's musing about how the invention of the automobile changed perceptions of distance and time...."So did I, Joan. There was the same kind of amazement and awe that was in the section with the telephone. Things we take for granted today were things of amazement back then. It must have been a rather magical time, in a sense.
Joan wrote: "Train travel in those days was certainly different, all that chitchat at each stop with locals the our narrator suspects come to the station just because they don't have anything else to do."
No kidding! Imagine having a 15-minute "chat" stop so that one can meet up with friends and make future plans. That would be rather fun......but make the shortest train trip rather long. You'd have to devote a whole day for a short trip.
I finished.All in all, I enjoyed this volume. It had some very funny moments.
This volume focusses on gay & lesbian sex. It's sometimes on the side of "love is love" and sometimes on the side of "it's not to be tolerated". It's almost as if this volume is Proust battling with his conscience, guilt and/or the social attitudes of the time in reference with homosexuality. This could be nothing more than Proust making peace with his own thoughts, guilt, shame, lusts, desires, etc. It is a terrible thing to have to deny oneself in one's own society & people.
The Verdunins are horrible. They make me laugh sometimes but basically they are small, petty people.
Joan, like you, I quite like Charlus.
Obsession is another prevalent theme. It's a rather cloying, claustrophobic theme. It's very irritating. Proust's writing is very powerful to give Obsession that closed in feeling through words and paper.
The narrator is still a horrible twit. When he talks about taking away Albertine's freedoms and money and locking her up, I cringe and recoil. He's creepy.
At the end of this volume, when our narrator is weeping and sobbing relentlessly, he goes back to his memories of wanting his mother in Combray and how helpless and alone he felt. He's feeling the same now at the thought of Albertine with another woman. He seems to be a very insecure person who needs cloying, constant relationships. Seems he was born that way.
Mod
I think that this is the central issue of the book. But I still don't know
how he's solved his dilemma ...
Joan wrote: "Hmm, I'm a total misanthrope in real life but an optimist about characters in novels (she admits sheepishly)"Well it's a lot easier that way, isn't it? :)
Yeah, I heard the To Be Real show as a podcast (where they unbeep the bad words). Very good.
Being a gamer, I hear this comment a lot... "You have to get through the first 20 hours before it starts to get good." It rather seems like the collective opinion of the posters here. Now, the related question is should one have to wait that long in order to get into Proust (or any artwork)?
He may not of....yet. :D Proust has a way of returning to a subject again and again.If I were to try to summarize what this has been about since Volume 1, I would say this is vaguely a tome about the narrator trying to understand himself in the tiniest nuances of his life.
I'm a big fan of pondering oneself & motives in order to better oneself over time, etc but this narrator is obsessive about pondering his thoughts and situations.
His mama is pivotal as well. When he goes back to his memories of yearning for his mama back in the days at Combray, we can see that he hasn't moved far in the years. He's still a clinging, cloying, insecure little boy who wants his mama holding his hand always.
Of course, these thoughts are rather vague in my head and just starting to form. I may be way off and the next few volumes show us something very different.
Tom wrote: "Being a gamer, I hear this comment a lot... "You have to get through the first 20 hours before it starts to get good." It rather seems like the collective opinion of the posters here. Now, the rela..."Interesting question. Not being a gamer - I don't think I would stick with a game for 20 hours if I wasn't intrigued by something. The last computer game I really enjoyed was "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxay" I just could not give up on that blank screen and repeated failures. On the other hand, I did not care about Myst and Frogger made me seasick. (if you know you any of these games award yourself points as a gamer paleontologist!)
BUT... I think the if a work of art doesn't hold your attention in some way, then move on, perhaps come back at another time - when, as Proust would point out, you will be a different person and so will respond differently.
For a novel, what holds your attention might be the plot, or the characters or the author's way with words. One difficulty with Proust is that most of us are reading a translation - and there is a lot of variation among the translations.
Proust captured me right at the beginning with his description of the space between sleep and wakefulness.
One reason this book is a classic is that each of can find something different in it - for me the books are about how time changes people/relationships and memory, and the difference between what we see/remember and reality.
"We never see those who are dear to us except in the animated workings...of our ...love for them, which, before allowing the images their faces represent to reach us.. flings them back on to the idea of them we have always had, makes them adhere to it, coincide with it."
Tom wrote: "Now, the related question is should one have to wait that long in order to get into Proust (or any artwork)?..."Sometimes, yes.
When glancing or engaging with anything at first, there's a "surface" attachment...more of a scanning of the whole. The thing is new to us, so we look at the outline of the whole, without seeing the details.
It's not until we take the time to examine the details and nuances that we get into the thing. It takes time for a new thing to worm it's way into our being and hearts.
It's like love. When we met our spouses, did we love them? No. They were just people. Then we got into their beings, habits, nuances. That took time. It's then that we appreciated their worth and their value to us.
Proust, artwork, games, anything we hold dear works under the same idea. It's the time invested that brings out the details that we end up loving and enjoying.
@Joan I played both Myst and Frogger back in the day, but I think I think I would play the latter today, but not the former. I think you make a very good point in that the person/object under consideration may not be for you at that particular time and place. With an object like a book, it's the reader that needs to change, but of course with people, it's more complex as two entities need to match up as it were as opposed to one.
@Petra - And this is where Habit (as Proust has already noted) holds sway - the conforming of one's life to an object or person over time and in a variety of places. This is of course assuming that the person/people have the desire/attraction to create and maintain that Habit.
I find it interesting that Petra's summary relates to the narrator as a person but mine is a step away from the characters as individuals, toward* the abstract.As I said, I love classics because they hold something for each individual reader.
@Tom,
@Laura,
What would you put into a book jacket blurb for these books?
*side note, I always get distracted,
in the U.S. toward is the norm, in the U.K. towards is. I wonder which they use in Canada.
I would say "towards" in this case. But being from Canada, we understand/swing both ways. :D
Joan wrote: "I find it interesting that Petra's summary relates to the narrator as a person but mine is a step away from the characters as individuals, toward* the abstract. ..."I've noticed this in myself before: I do tend to look at the people more often than the abstract.
Funny how our minds work.
Tom wrote: "@Petra - And this is where Habit (as Proust has already noted) holds sway - the conforming of one's life to an object or person over time and in a variety of places. This is of course assuming that the person/people have the desire/attraction to create and maintain that Habit..."I'm not sure I understand, Tom.
How is getting to know a person or object conforming one's life to that person or object?
Is it not more a matter of learning whether that person or object will fit (without conforming) into one's life?
That said, nothing is a perfect fit, so a modicum of conforming is necessary. That's called compromise. LOL!
I had to look up toward & towards because I didn't know which was correct.And I hope this will make you all laugh...
I have to go on vacation and I absolutely hate going to sleep and waking up in strange bedrooms, just call me Marcel :)
Mod
@Tom,
@Laura,
What would you put into a book jacket blurb for these books?.."
No idea!!! ;)
Petra wrote: "Tom wrote: "@Petra - And this is where Habit (as Proust has already noted) holds sway - the conforming of one's life to an object or person over time and in a variety of places. This is of course a..."Isn't compromise conforming? Rubbing away the sharp edges for a better and closer fit?
Ahh....got it! I'll think on that one. It may be.
On the other hand, if one doesn't compromise at all, the other has to compromise completely and thereby lose him/herself. Is the integrity of the one worth the loss of the other?
Isn't our narrator rather a noncompromiser? It seems that everything has to be for him, his pleasure, his desires. Don't the others in his life suffer in their way because of this?
Of course, that may be what Proust means by habit and conforming.
Yes, definitely something to think about.
Thanks, Tom! If I come up with an answer or a thought, I'll add it here.
In Sod & Gom, I was struck by the fact that we are only now getting hints about how others see the narrator- until now we've only had his view of himself. From his viewpoint, he seems arrogant, selfish, insecure and critical of others, but M. Charlus, Mme Verdurin and Albertine tell us that is not how is acquaintances see him.
I don't know how the series ends, but maybe the unreliability of self-image is part of his story.
On another note, I just got back from vacation with a bruised face from trying to navigate a strange hotel room in the dark...Marcel said new bedrooms were upsetting. We lost power at the hotel and there were no emergency lights in the rooms, just the hallways.
Joan, that's awful! I hope your face is feeling better and healing. Sorry for commenting so late.....I just saw this post.
I like your thought about the unreliability of self-image playing a part in this narrative.
Does it ever go away? I know I'm still not sure how I'm portraying myself to others sometimes. What I feel may be confidence, could be interpreted as arrogance, for example. I try to portray the truth but.....what is truth? And how do we know we're accurately portraying it?
Just finished Part I. I can't say I understood all of it, but the bee/flower, Charlus/Jupien connection was made perfectly clear. Though the narrator seems to be telling two different tales - on the one hand, he talks about the extremely unlikely pairing of Charlupien, but later on he talks about how numerous Sodomites are. I understand it is lucky that Jupien has a thing for paunchy, old guys but if there are as many Sodomites as he talks about later, by sheer numbers there should be more opportunities. The logic being that 1% of a really big number is also a sizeable number.Edited to add: And of course he starts Part II with an obelisk that looks like pink nougat and might be slightly bent.
From The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/books/boo..."In this first section he alludes to the existence of gay angels in heaven, and puts forward the idea that homosexuality only became unnatural when man-made laws decreed it so. Continuing on this theme, he asserts that a homosexual man's actions can only be termed perverse when he has sex with a woman. He then supposedly changes the subject, only to begin the book's next section with a description of evening sunlight giving the Luxor obelisk "an appearance of pink nougat" so that you might want to wrap your hand around it and give it a twist."
Tom, I found this whole book interesting from the perspective of Proust wrestling with homosexuality. "Wrestling" may not be the correct word. However, Proust does seem to be torn between homosexuality being "okay" and it being "wrong". I think it says a lot about Proust's battles with his sexual life and how it conformed with society and the position it put Proust in (in terms of fitting into society).
I rather found it a very personal story for Proust to tell. I'm not sure, though, whether I'm reading too much into it.
He wrote a hell of a lot into it, so I don't think you could be blamed for reading too much into it.Try this link for the Guardian article.
I've decided to re-read Part I since I did not pick up the gay angels reference among other things apparently. I do notice that both Marcel and Charlus have extraordinary things happen to them when they break habit. Charlus meets Jupien because he (the Baron) has come to call on the Marquise in the morning. Marcel, for his part, has abandoned his favorite voyeur spot at the top of the house in favor of the stairs, which allows him to see the two men meet.This after mentioning that the Guermantes do not have a regular day, but he goes on to describe how the Baron would only pay calls between 4 and 6, when Jupien would be at the office.
He also says (in talking about male and female plants and how they are fertilised) "The laws of the vegetable kingdom are themselves governed by increasingly higher laws." Which lends me to believe that he thinks that male/female relations are the natural order of things.
Phew.....that's ambitious, Tom. High five to you!! I did enjoy Part 1 quite a bit but not enough to read it again back-to-back. I found throughout this book that there was a tension...or maybe a tug-of-war..... between the idea that male/female is natural and gay/lesbian relationships are acceptable.
It was an interesting aspect of this novel. I often thought about Proust and how he must have felt out of place within his society. It's a shame he felt this way.
Do you think that Proust could have written this work had he grown up in today's world? Not only don't we contemplate things as minutely as he does but we have much more sexual equality and acceptance. Without the tension, could Proust have written Sodom & Gomorrah and the other volumes?
found this while browsing.... A oarlor game enjoyed by Proust:https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2...
Oh I didn't say I enjoyed it - I said that I felt I missed a lot, so I'm going to back to see if I can get it on a second reading. As for male/female, the idea of inversion still fits that model. What may appear to be two men is actually a man and a woman, so the natural order is preserved. But whither transgenderism which would seem to fit the inversion theory?
Marcel does take pains to describe the feminine characteristics of Charlupien but yet establishes Charlus as the male (butch?) and Jupien as the female (femme?) Or are they both femmes, but Charlus less so?
Transgenderism wouldn't have been a thought to Proust. His society barely acknowledged gays and lesbians. It would be a stretch to think of transgenderism, I think. Hmmm....how would transgenderism fit the inversion theory? Interesting thought.
Would a female person who is a transgender male but cannot do anything about this state be attracted to another woman? Would the world see this relationship as a lesbian one? If so, then the inversion theory still works, does it not? She/he would be a man, while she/she would be the woman?
In a world before transgender was imagined see transgendered people as gay or lesbian?
Going on the notion that a transgendered person would have put great thought and effort into their gender, I would suggest/assume that they would not be inverts. Another assumption is that inversion helps to maintain the "natural" male/female relationship.CIS Male + CIS Female = Yes
CIS Male + CIS Male = Yes, if one is "inverted".
CIS Female + CIS Female = Yes, if one is "inverted".
MTF + CIS Male = Yes.
MTF + CIS Female = Yes, if the CIS Female is "inverted"
FTM + CIS Male = Yes, if the CIS Male is "inverted"
FTM + CIS Female = Yes.
Nice! That's laid out well. Thanks, Tom!
Here's one of the lines from Part I I'm having trouble with:"And indeed, what repels us is the most touching thing of all, more touching than any refinement or delicacy, for it represents an admirable though unconscious effort on the part of nature: the recognition of sex by itself, in spite of the deceptions of sex, appears as an unavowed attempt to escape from itself towards what an initial error on the part of society has segregated it from."
It is certainly a convoluted passage. I took it that Proust meant:Since inverts appear to be men but have feminine spirits, when we see a beautiful, effeminate man, rather than being repelled by his daintiness, we should be touched/sympathize with the the spirit female trying to escape from the prison of a male body and the erroneous expectations of society which thinks she is a man.
The expressions of the trapped female spirit are unconscious and admirable.
Joan wrote: "It is certainly a convoluted passage. I took it that Proust meant:Since inverts appear to be men but have feminine spirits, when we see a beautiful, effeminate man, rather than being repelled by h..."
I like that interpretation. I think I was on that road, but you expressed it far better than I. That's why I couldn't help but think of transgendered people in Part I - that would seem to be the description for them... "spirit female trying to escape from the prison of a male body and the erroneous expectations of society which thinks she is a man."
Our Marcel doesn't have a very high opinion of doctors, does he?
Could be Freudian, Proust's Dad was a doctor (just kidding)
It sounds like a common theme where the young ladies scorn society and live "scandalous" lives - e.g., Oriane de Guermantes, Mme de Villeparisis and Mme Sargis-le-Duc and then must try to reascend the mountain. Similar tales of the young men seem curiously absent, unless I've missed them?
I think it's the old double standard again: women who live scandalously have to reascend the mountain; men who live scandalously are carried on shoulders to the peak of the mountain. With this in mind, would men notice the scandalous lives of other men or would that be something more "normal"?
Thing is, both men and women allow for the double standard. It still exists; just not as much (thankfully).
Aren't there hints that M. Charlus is considered scandalous- but the scandal is outweighed by his social standing?
I don't remember, Joan. He probably was considered scandalous....but was he scandalous outside of being gay? A gay lifestyle was scandalous here until not many years ago and might have been more so in Proust's time?
Tom, I don't mean to demean the observation. Not at all. I can be way off base in my thoughts of a double standard. It's been around for so long that maybe I'm seeing it where it isn't? :D
Petra wrote: "Tom, I don't mean to demean the observation. Not at all. I can be way off base in my thoughts of a double standard. It's been around for so long that maybe I'm seeing it where it isn't? :D"
That was actually what I was getting at. That apparently the women are outcasts for behaving a particular way but the men are not. But you have to consider, who were all these scandalous women being scandalous with? I doubt they were all citizens of Gomorrah.
As for Charlus, his scandalous is more bark than bite. It's in his vested interest to portray himself as a rake to hide where his real inclinations lie. So I think he does his fair share to keep the rumor mill churning.
I see that Mme Villeparisis and Mme le Duc scandalized their peers, but I don't see that for Oriane.I would summarize her career as: she began beautiful, well born, smart and poor, then married well within her class, and became a celebrity within her circle. The only risky thing she did was snub most of the women in her circle - and they admired and sought to mimic her until she aged out of stardom.
My reason for saying M. Charlus had a sullied reputation was because in Guermantes Way, the Guermantes tried to prevent the narrator from falling under Charlus sway. Either the Duchess or the Princess tried to prevent them from leaving a party together.
As I was typing out Oriane's name the small voice in the back of my head was whispering to me that it was wrong. I should have listened. She seems to fit more into the Odette school of lower class women (than their husbands) who enter into high society due to that marriage. I could swear there's at least one other named character who fell out of society and has to reclaim it. Apart from the young woman Saint-Loup mentioned who apparently goes to that brothel.
Edited to add: "if the selfsame woman who the other day knew nobody now goes everyhere, and another who occupied a commanding position is ostracised, one is inclined to see in these changes merely those personal ups and downs which from time to time bring about, in the same section of society, in consequence of speculations on the stock exchange, a resounding collapse or enrichment beyond the wildest dreams of avarice."
As for Charlus, where I'm at (Chapter 1 of Part II? where Marcel's just seen Albertine) - that the Princess de Guermantes is at least sympathetic to him. She mentions he should get a woman to accept him as he is.
I still don't get why the Duc and Duchesse de Guermantes spend time with Marcel the way they do. He still seems like kind of a jerk - saying he feels nothing for Gilberte, but basically makes an F-U move by regifting the book cover to Albertine. Their meeting seemed a bit anticlimactic but I guess it was meant to show how Marcel had toned down his act but had not discarded it entirely - his longing for a woman to come see him.
Hmm, do you think it's because he is a writer and they are so vain they hope to appear in his book?
I think it may be pointing out how society's value is different from the actual value of a person. His intellectualism is a draw (but he has produced no literary works, so he's not a snob), and he is new to society so there is that as well. I finished Chapter One of Part II and I think Proust is at his best when writing about death. Maybe because that's a common experience for everyone, but I find his work at its most profound.
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Books mentioned in this topic
Sodoma e Gomorra (other topics)American Gods (other topics)
All Our Wrong Todays (other topics)
Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time: A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past (other topics)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
George Chauncey (other topics)William Shakespeare (other topics)
Also, the snobbery and social distinctions sometimes take me by surprise, although they shouldn't:
"He felt indeed that he was alive now that he had discovered somebody who knew the unimportance of the Cambremers and the grandeur of the Guermantes, somebody for whom the social universe existed."
Egad!