Nick Wellings’s Reviews > Reading of Proust > Status Update

I'll just finish this chapter, the go and actually eat something, finally....

So far, so "ok". Reads as a guide of sorts now, as suspected.

That was a really good contextual chapter. Not too detailed for reasons of space, but tantalisingly broad. Good reading for those interested in Proust's antecedents, influences and contemporaries. Onwards to the chapters on "The Novel" itself.

Fowlie drawing interesting parallels between P and Mallarme + Baudelaire and their influence upon him. Never encountered those ideas before. Stimulating. Also new word: acedia.

"A great novel is the realm of grace in which there is no unimportant detail, where chance is abolished because it is always turned into something meaningful." Good, (rest of sentence less so.)

Seems proto-Shattuck so far. A field guide or just a guide. Will see how this reads.