Auxiliary Reading Chit-Chat

[Nick]

Cool, Eugene! I liked Porter. How did you find it? I know it probably didn't answer all your questions, (if any!) but I thought he was great at deconstructing Proust's style and sentences, his rhetorical and authorial devices.

[Eugene]

John Porter Houston is a French rhetorician; I also bought his The Traditions of French Prose Style, A Rhetorical Study; in the former book he shows Proust's use of isocolon & antithesis in the phrase which let me see, interpolator that I am, Proust's method of three or his 'four' dimensional character construction in Swann. Antithesis makes a 'well rounded' character. I'll have more to say on what I've learned from JPH...

[Scribble]

On Jason's kindly advice and for the interest of members:

Compliments of Ali, there is an italian author (still living) who is also a film director (hesitantly described as one of the twentieth century's greatest and least well-known) by the name of Fabio Carpi. I don't want to interrupt reading schedules but I'd like to let everyone know that Carpi was completely inspired by Proust, by memory, by remembrance, by love, by social interaction - in short, very much of what occupied Proust. He alludes to Proust frequently in all his work, which deserves much more and wider recognition than it currently receives. His films are Proust translated from prose to screen.

If you are interested in reading him after the great Year of Proust is over, his only translated work is:

The Abandoned Places in English (translated by Isabel Quigly) or I Luoghi Abbandonati in Italian (2012 edition - indicating a revival of interest).