In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

[Brian E]

I finished the last volume on December 23rd but didn't get around to writing my review until early January. Here are my reviews to the last two of six volumes in the Modern Library which combines the Captive and the Fugitive in one volume.

The Captive / The Fugitive https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Time Regained https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I didn't enjoy the series that much. I gave out four 3 star ratings, one 2 star rating and one 4 star rating. So overall the series rates as 3 stars. However, giving books 3 stars was generous as most bordered between 2 and 3 stars.
I didn't care for the series' characters or for what they talked about, especially the narrator Marcel. Lovely, poetic writing loses a lot of its attractive ability after a few thousand pages of it.
The only book I gave 4 stars to was The Swann Way and mainly because of Swann in Love, the novella within the novel. Swann was a more interesting central character than Marcel. It was also the only one that Brian Nelson, a favorite translator, translated.
In contrast to Proust, I just started my 9th Zola novel after taking a year hiatus for Proust. I'm enjoying it between 4 and 5 stars worth. There are also unlikeable characters but at least they say and do interesting things.

[Nidhi]

I agree, Proust's characters just do nothing, there is no plot to put in a nutshell. I began Zola last year but Proust is taking too much of time. I will be happy to finish the last book.

I had very good experience with Zola, If everything goes as i have planned I will continue series after July, before that I have to tackle The Magic Mountain by Mann.

[Piyangie, Classical Princess]

Finished Time Regained. Finally, I'm done with In Search of Lost Time. Woohoo! Feeling both accomplished and relieved! 😀

[Melanie]

Nidhi wrote: "I agree, Proust's characters just do nothing, there is no plot to put in a nutshell. I began Zola last year but Proust is taking too much of time. I will be happy to finish the last book.

I had v..."

Hi Nidhi, I’ll be right there with you with Zola. I’ve read The Ladies' Paradise and I want to start at the beginning of the series.

[Nidhi]

I too have read The Ladies Paradise, loved the scene of mall , all decorated in white,in last section of the book, I was impressed by Zola's power of description.

[Nidhi]

Then I read the first book of the Rougon-Macquart series, it impressed me with strong characterization.

[Nidhi]

Congratulations Piyangie!!! Now you can proudly state that you have read Proust.

[Piyangie, Classical Princess]

Thanks, Nidhi! That, I can. 😀

[Piyangie, Classical Princess]

Since Emile Zola is discussed here, perhaps a buddy read could be set up for next year for the Rougon-Macquart series. Just thinking out loud. :) I have only read one in the series and planning to read Ladies's Paradise this year.

Btw, I'm unable to find the archived thread of Zola. I remember that we read him some time ago. Brian made some recommendations there, and now I can't find the thread. :(

[Rosemarie, Northern Roaming Scholar]

Archives in Translation, January 2022 is where you'll find Zola, Piyangie.

[Piyangie, Classical Princess]

Of course, he'd be in the translations! What on earth I was thinking? I was looking for him in author/genre archives. :) Thanks, Rosemarie.

[Nidhi]

It will be great Piyangie, to have a common thread for works of Zola. As with Proust, it will be a great motivation to continue with the series. We can count on Rosmarie for making an appearance sometimes, she is a Zola fan and has read all his books. And Brian too, who is way too ahead of us.

[Lesle, Appalachain Bibliophile]

Congratulations Piyangie and Brian E a huge accomplishment!!

I had read several reviews of his characters lack of luster.

I will move the Archived thread of Zola back into the Buddy Read secton.

[Nidhi]

Thanks Lesle.

[Piyangie, Classical Princess]

Lesle wrote: "Congratulations Piyangie and Brian E a huge accomplishment!!

I had read several reviews of his characters lack of luster.

I will move the Archived thread of Zola back into the Buddy Read secton."

Thanks, Lesle.

[Rosemarie, Northern Roaming Scholar]

Way to go, Brian and Lesle!

[Lesle, Appalachain Bibliophile]

Piyangie and Nidhi
Your more than welcome!

[Nidhi]

Finished reading the last part of this book. The HERO of the book is TIME. After taking his time with NAMES, PLACES and PEOPLE, Proust’s last part reaches the crescendo and describes the role of time in all the mentioned life. He shows the two faces of time , destructive as well as rejuvenating , fleeting as well as eternal. Human beings’ desperate actions to control it. Proust could have named this part as Triumph of Time as it ravages all and spares no one . As time passes memories become abundant , after a stage in human life other people also become symbols of past, as if a person can watch his whole life through other personages.
This part contains the most beautiful passages about memories , literature , art, artists and writers, his own development as a writer, fear of time and future; which goes on and on for hundred pages.

[Nidhi]

Below are two passages which give us the idea of what Proust was thinking while writing the book and how far he has succeeded in his effort.

....I thought more modestly of my book and it would be inaccurate even to say that I thought of those who would read it as “my” readers. For it seemed to me that they would not be “my” readers but the readers of their own selves, my book being merely a sort of magnifying glass like those which the optician at Combray used to offer his customers—it would be my book, but with its help I would furnish them with the means of reading what lay inside themselves.

....How happy would he be, I thought, the man who had the power to write such a book! What a task awaited him! To give some idea of this task one would have to borrow comparisons from the loftiest and the most varied arts; for this writer—who, moreover, must bring out the opposed facets of each of his characters in order to show its volume—would have to prepare his book with meticulous care, perpetually regrouping his forces like a general conducting an offensive, and he would have also to endure his book like a form of fatigue, to accept it like a discipline, build it up like a church, follow it like a medical regime, vanquish it like an obstacle, win it like a friendship, cosset it like a little child, create it like a new world without neglecting those mysteries whose explanation is to be found probably only in worlds other than our own and the presentiment of which is the thing that moves us most deeply in life and in art. In long books of this kind there are parts which there has been time only to sketch, parts which, because of the very amplitude of the architect’s plan, will no doubt never be completed. How many great cathedrals remain unfinished!