This was really delightful to read, thank you. I can't tell whether you have read In Search of Lost Time more than once, but if you haven't, I am here to tell you that re-reading it is also an amazing experience! I read it first in my twenties and then again in my forties when I had read, lived and experienced so much more and the second time was really different from the first in ways that are hard to explain. Now I am wondering if I should wait another twenty years to read it again or shorten the interval to ten years as I get older (lol).
Thank you for this lovely comment! I haven't reread it yet—I was thinking of rereading and trying out the Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright translation…then rereading again in French? But I'd need to improve my French to do so.
But it's so nice to hear about your experiences rereading it. It seems like it would be so lovely to meet the same characters again, watch them go through life again, and learn new things from their trials and tribulations, their joys and failures…and have your own life experiences enrich the text…
finally, someone has put into words a feeling that's been haunting me for years: everyone can enjoy anything they like, but there's a reason why Hotel Hazbin or Genshin Impact or Lore Olympus or The Thirteenth Tale will never move me in a way good old Les Misèrables does. Maybe preferring higher art over entertainment does actually make me a snob — not gonna lie, trying to pretend to care about titles everyone loves but I for some reason can't feel anything towards is exhausting. But the awe that strikes when I find _that_ book or movie or game? My God, it's worth everything.
at school, the best time to read classics were summer holidays. Of course, there were the same Great Russian Novels like War and Peace, Crime and Punishment or Dead Souls, but no teacher to tell us how to love them in a proper way, just blessed silence. It gave us space and solitude to read in our own pace, make our own mind and find something to love or argue about. My most favourite pieces from school lit are the ones read on holidays because of the time spent with them.
that being said, Proust definitely sounds like the author to try out, and I should write more about favourite things as Schejhldahl did (also a wonderful critic to learn from). Why do everything if not for love of it?
yes!!! I have read and loved many things that are "mere" entertainment (and tbh sometimes mere entertainment is exactly what I want)…but certain stories just hit different
I definitely fell in love with some assigned reading (I was especially obsessed with Orwell's appendix to 1984, "The Principles of Newspeak"…I honestly liked it more than the novel itself), but many of my favorite books were ones I found for myself
(although I've also taken some amazing writing classes outside of school, with writers who picked amazing and very transformative readings—so maybe it's also about finding the person whose tastes really pair well with/deepen your own?)
love the last line of your comment too—it's so nice to be passionate about the things we read/experience in life!
Ahhh I loved this so much!! As I said before, I read the first ten pages of Proust, and I loved it so much I am now ‘saving’ it for later in life, so I always have something great to look forward to. But, now the vision haunts me that I could die before I read it! So, I have to read it asap, you convinced me! The earlier in life I read it, the more rereads I will be able to squeeze out of it.
Margje! Thank you for reading and commenting. I was actually just talking to a friend earlier about how, a few years ago, I made a new year's resolution to "not save the best for last"…I think it applies to literature and to so many other pleasures in life. Why not experience them NOW, why not decide that we deserve them NOW?
One year, I was stuck in a house with nothing to read except literature. I decided to give in and read all of it, not knowing that Crime & Punishment would change my life forever. That doesn’t mean I still don’t read absolute garbage, but I found my life profoundly different after ingesting the classics. I haven’t read Proust, so adding that to my list between a book about historical trashy gossip and episodes of Love After Lockup.
I love this, thank you for sharing. I really think there's something to the experience of being trapped in a house with a preset collection of books, being unbelievably bored, and then reading something incredible…that's how I read Chekhov's plays (literally the only book at my uncle's house that wasn't a mathematics textbook, when my family visited him for a few days) and I really treasure that experience
Very much worth reading Gene Wolfe if you haven't already (start with the first story of The Fifth Head of Cerberus, or dive straight into his Book of the New Sun). As Stan Robinson more or less says - https://www.nyrsf.com/2013/09/a-story-kim-stanley-robinson.html - he is Proust with rocketships, which turns out to be far more Proustian than that capsule phrase suggests.
This is an amazing, amazing review, wow—I love the observations Kim Stanley Robinson makes about the different experiences Vietnam War versus Korean War vets had, how Gene Wolfe was shaped by the latter; and of course the description of how Wolfe was influenced by Proust is so appealing!
These parts are so great, and really make me want to read Wolfe:
'Wolfe is playing in these stories; he is creating and remaking and celebrating his own personal tradition. And the pastiches are always more than mere imitations…you could say he does his literary criticism almost exclusively by writing more stories.
Note…the writers and genres here, which could serve as a list of his chosen tradition (what some people would call his “influences”)…there are no other high Modernist writers on the list…But Marcel Proust is definitely there, and he matters; he came later in Wolfe’s reading life and served as the new torque applied to all that came before…
After Wolfe read Proust, he understood he was free, free to become himself in any way he wanted, to become, like Proust, one of the great Modernist writers, all of whom make their own tradition, style, subject matter, and reality. After you’ve read a novel that contains a 240-page garden party, why should you fear anything? You can’t. Anything is possible.'
Oh my goodness, everyone needs some Gene Wolfe in their lives. His writing MAKES YOU PAY ATTENTION. I adore his writing. I will talk your ear off like a sycophantic toddler about trains or dinosaurs with regards to Wolfe. I will then press into your palm a cylinder of Pringles.
No-one told me about Proust, either. I mean, of course I know who he was and I see him referred to all the time. But no-one told me I should read him---until now---and thank you so much for making it so real how I MUST!
Yes, it feels so ludicrous to say: "No one told me about this extremely famous, foundational writer!"…but that really is how I felt when I started reading him! I hope you can have your transformative Proust experience too
Proust has been on my reading list for a while now. Actually, many years ago, I read the first volume of his great novel, started the second, and - stopped for some reason. I don't remember why. But it's a long and challenging book, and life must have interfered. But I didn't mean to give up for good: I just set it aside temporarily, and then a year passed, and then another, and then many more. So, I tried again last year, but to my dismay, I discovered that my French was no longer at a sufficiently high level for Proust. (The funny thing is that I definitely *speak* French better than I did back then. Ah, but I don't read it as well!) So, now I'm trying to read some easier French books, to get my French where it needs to be so that I could try Proust once more.
Anyway, thanks for writing this. I guess that's Substack telling me not to give up!
If it isn't your first language, though, reading it in French must be so intimidating…I'm really impressed! Your comment actually reminded me of a lovely post on Helen DeWitt's blog, where she specifically writes about learning French through reading Proust: https://paperpools.blogspot.com/2010/04/la-recherche-de-marcel-proust.html
I found this post a few years ago and have always wanted to try reading Proust again, in the original…but my French is nowhere near good enough, so I too might need to find some easier French books. I was thinking Annie Ernaux?
Thank you for this lovely comment, and for sharing your Proust and French journey…genuinely very inspiring!
I read Proust while learning French, having recently moved to France, so I got to discover in real time which of his most common idioms are still common currency, and which make you sound like a crazy person in the boulangerie . . . For much easier but Proust-adjacent and still supremely good, I'd go with Maupassant. (The similar period means a lot of the trickier vocab is useful for both.)
thank you for this rec! I replied to Irena above, but I have also been wanting to improve my French reading skills to read À la récherche…choosing someone from a similar time period is such a good strategy
Wow. Half way through this I ran to my local library´s online catalogue to see if they had Swann´s Way so I could go borrow it on Monday -- they don´t! It´s been a while since I read about a book and immediately felt the need to hold it in my hands and be reading it NOW. But I´m also commenting because the passages of Proust you used reminded me of my favourite writer of all time - Simone de Beauvoir, and more specifically, her memoirs (and more specifically, the first one titled Memoirs of a dutiful daughter). I rarely hear people talk about them. I never met a person IRL who said to me, yes, I love those memoirs. I am patiently waiting for this experience, but I´ve been talking about these books since 2011 and it´s yet to happen. Where are my de Beauvoirs pals at?
She also has a very rich, and very dense language and a way of describing the most delicate moments of everyday... it´s not easy reading. But she will describe a porridge she used to have for breakfast as a child in a way that will make you stare into a distance and then come back for more on the page and feel alive. Yes, she had a full and exciting life in terms of external appearances (her work, writing, activism, relationships, etc) but all of these things are found in her writing alongside the very mundane and the daily. And she understood herself in a way that made my heart drop when I read her for the first time aged 20. I´ve read plenty of books since but the experience I had with her writing was of such a rare occurence, I don´t think I have felt anything similar until I discovered Lauren Groff last year.
Simone de Beauvoir is my nodal point. Lastly, fun fact, I´m not sure if I would ever read her if I didn´t see a quote from Memoirs of a dutiful daughter on Tumblr. Of course.
I know this is not in person, but: for a long time, I read everything I could get ahold of by Simone de Beauvoir. She said somewhere (it must have been in her memoirs, probably in the third volume) that two authors that she never tired of were Rousseau and, yes, Proust.
I also really love De Beauvoir’s memoirs, especially the first one, which I also read in my early twenties. I felt so seen by her, living in an environment where I did not always feel understood. You are definitely not the only fan! I started reading The Second Sex recently, and am also really loving that.
SIMONE FAN RIGHT HERE. Inhaled Dutiful Daughter then ordered rest of collection on eBay, skipped ahead to the one about her mother dying, debating whether to return to chronological order…
thank you! apologies for the kind of obnoxious response…so I used to use Byredo's Lascaux (which was a nice cool-toned deep red, almost burgundy?), which has been discontinued…I repurchased it 3 times so I'm heartbroken…
so this is actually a combo of Byredo's Redolence (cool toned but too much of a bright red) + Dries van Noten's Bohemian Scarlett (very dark-toned purple-burgundy, kind of gothic)…mostly because I had the latter languishing in my makeup drawer, unused
it's actually really annoying to combine 2 shades every morning lol so I need to find another lipstick that has the exact color I want!
thank you Elle!!! it was a real joy to write (well, also an immense struggle, as is the case with many writing projects) and I really appreciate you reading and commenting 🕊️
i read swann's way last summer and could never get myself really into it, mainly because it was while i was moving and traveling for work, so i definitely did not have the space and time to really absorb it. as im clearing out my shelves for another bigger move i had placed it in my give away pile but this article has now convinced me to give it another try 😀
and you have the chance I'd be really grateful if you gave my most recent novel a glance, ive released chapters of it weekly on here so it is free to do, I've been inspired a lot by joyce and george eliot and vonnegut and kerouac and allende and garcia marquez so as to give you an idea for what you might find. in any case, thanks for advocating for big L Literature, so much of our society is built on the suppression of intellectual pursuits to keep the masses more easily manipulated. indeed the framing of literature and philosophy as snobbish or bohemian pursuits of no earthly value serves this expertly. convince the ppl they shouldnt read anything more complicated than pop lit or on the basis of identity politics and they become much less adept at navigating the complex political atmosphere that ensures they remain just a cog in the machine.
Thank you for this really thoughtful comment! I really do agree that there is something valuable about Literature (it's able to express the complexity of human relations, society, politics in a way that short tweets and more disposable takes can't—even if those takes are more obviously relevant to 2025, they don't always create a deeper level of understanding…)
I read the first ch of your novel and will read the second ch shortly—I'm always interested in how people share short fiction or serialized fiction on Substack!
Proust <3 I have to admit, I'm always a little jealous when people say a book "changed their life" -- there are so many books I love but none I feel that I could definitively point to and say, I was *different* after reading this. Sometimes I worry this is evidence of a shallower form of engagement on my part, that there must be something I'm missing, but I think it's also just as likely it's due at least in part to my own hang-ups about language (what constitutes change, exactly? There are certain books I think about all the time, that I reference and refer to and that probably have shaped my consciousness in ways I'm not fully aware of.). But I like the idea of nodal points, and I think Proust would be one of mine, too, even though I've only read the first four volumes so far. I love how much of it is about the life we live in our head, the desires and fantasies we construct and protect and are inevitably disappointed by. I feel like I was lead to believe that In Search of Lost Time would be difficult reading when actually it's just long. I had no idea how funny it would be, either.
This also made me think about taste, and how I sometimes think a lack of a developed taste (not "good" taste, but "personal" taste) is what prevents people from having better reading (or movie-watching, or etc.) experiences. I often see people who like reading and/or want to get back into reading, but don't really seem to know how to find what to read beyond what's currently popular or easily accessible to them, and so they're often disappointed. In my experience, it takes time, and critical thinking, and going down a lot of rabbit holes, but knowing what you love, and where you can find it, and who you trust to recommend you something can make a huge difference! Anyway, this was way too long, but thanks for giving me a lot to think about!
I picked up Swann's Way at a secondhand bookshop a few months back and have been waiting for the right time to start. This might be the nudge I needed!
I love when it feels like the universe has produced a subtle, unmistakable sign to finally embark on a project…if you do read Swann's Way, I'd love to hear about it!
The one that begins with Lydia Davis and then continues with a new translator per volume! From Penguin. I really adore Lydia Davis and recommend her unreservedly
This was really delightful to read, thank you. I can't tell whether you have read In Search of Lost Time more than once, but if you haven't, I am here to tell you that re-reading it is also an amazing experience! I read it first in my twenties and then again in my forties when I had read, lived and experienced so much more and the second time was really different from the first in ways that are hard to explain. Now I am wondering if I should wait another twenty years to read it again or shorten the interval to ten years as I get older (lol).
Thank you for this lovely comment! I haven't reread it yet—I was thinking of rereading and trying out the Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright translation…then rereading again in French? But I'd need to improve my French to do so.
But it's so nice to hear about your experiences rereading it. It seems like it would be so lovely to meet the same characters again, watch them go through life again, and learn new things from their trials and tribulations, their joys and failures…and have your own life experiences enrich the text…
Really love this perspective. Already looking forward to rereading Proust!
finally, someone has put into words a feeling that's been haunting me for years: everyone can enjoy anything they like, but there's a reason why Hotel Hazbin or Genshin Impact or Lore Olympus or The Thirteenth Tale will never move me in a way good old Les Misèrables does. Maybe preferring higher art over entertainment does actually make me a snob — not gonna lie, trying to pretend to care about titles everyone loves but I for some reason can't feel anything towards is exhausting. But the awe that strikes when I find _that_ book or movie or game? My God, it's worth everything.
at school, the best time to read classics were summer holidays. Of course, there were the same Great Russian Novels like War and Peace, Crime and Punishment or Dead Souls, but no teacher to tell us how to love them in a proper way, just blessed silence. It gave us space and solitude to read in our own pace, make our own mind and find something to love or argue about. My most favourite pieces from school lit are the ones read on holidays because of the time spent with them.
that being said, Proust definitely sounds like the author to try out, and I should write more about favourite things as Schejhldahl did (also a wonderful critic to learn from). Why do everything if not for love of it?
yes!!! I have read and loved many things that are "mere" entertainment (and tbh sometimes mere entertainment is exactly what I want)…but certain stories just hit different
I definitely fell in love with some assigned reading (I was especially obsessed with Orwell's appendix to 1984, "The Principles of Newspeak"…I honestly liked it more than the novel itself), but many of my favorite books were ones I found for myself
(although I've also taken some amazing writing classes outside of school, with writers who picked amazing and very transformative readings—so maybe it's also about finding the person whose tastes really pair well with/deepen your own?)
love the last line of your comment too—it's so nice to be passionate about the things we read/experience in life!
Ahhh I loved this so much!! As I said before, I read the first ten pages of Proust, and I loved it so much I am now ‘saving’ it for later in life, so I always have something great to look forward to. But, now the vision haunts me that I could die before I read it! So, I have to read it asap, you convinced me! The earlier in life I read it, the more rereads I will be able to squeeze out of it.
Margje! Thank you for reading and commenting. I was actually just talking to a friend earlier about how, a few years ago, I made a new year's resolution to "not save the best for last"…I think it applies to literature and to so many other pleasures in life. Why not experience them NOW, why not decide that we deserve them NOW?
Yes, yes, yes!! That’s it! Will be thinking about how this applies in more areas of my life, because it most definitely does!
One year, I was stuck in a house with nothing to read except literature. I decided to give in and read all of it, not knowing that Crime & Punishment would change my life forever. That doesn’t mean I still don’t read absolute garbage, but I found my life profoundly different after ingesting the classics. I haven’t read Proust, so adding that to my list between a book about historical trashy gossip and episodes of Love After Lockup.
I love this, thank you for sharing. I really think there's something to the experience of being trapped in a house with a preset collection of books, being unbelievably bored, and then reading something incredible…that's how I read Chekhov's plays (literally the only book at my uncle's house that wasn't a mathematics textbook, when my family visited him for a few days) and I really treasure that experience
Very much worth reading Gene Wolfe if you haven't already (start with the first story of The Fifth Head of Cerberus, or dive straight into his Book of the New Sun). As Stan Robinson more or less says - https://www.nyrsf.com/2013/09/a-story-kim-stanley-robinson.html - he is Proust with rocketships, which turns out to be far more Proustian than that capsule phrase suggests.
This is an amazing, amazing review, wow—I love the observations Kim Stanley Robinson makes about the different experiences Vietnam War versus Korean War vets had, how Gene Wolfe was shaped by the latter; and of course the description of how Wolfe was influenced by Proust is so appealing!
These parts are so great, and really make me want to read Wolfe:
'Wolfe is playing in these stories; he is creating and remaking and celebrating his own personal tradition. And the pastiches are always more than mere imitations…you could say he does his literary criticism almost exclusively by writing more stories.
Note…the writers and genres here, which could serve as a list of his chosen tradition (what some people would call his “influences”)…there are no other high Modernist writers on the list…But Marcel Proust is definitely there, and he matters; he came later in Wolfe’s reading life and served as the new torque applied to all that came before…
After Wolfe read Proust, he understood he was free, free to become himself in any way he wanted, to become, like Proust, one of the great Modernist writers, all of whom make their own tradition, style, subject matter, and reality. After you’ve read a novel that contains a 240-page garden party, why should you fear anything? You can’t. Anything is possible.'
Oh my goodness, everyone needs some Gene Wolfe in their lives. His writing MAKES YOU PAY ATTENTION. I adore his writing. I will talk your ear off like a sycophantic toddler about trains or dinosaurs with regards to Wolfe. I will then press into your palm a cylinder of Pringles.
No-one told me about Proust, either. I mean, of course I know who he was and I see him referred to all the time. But no-one told me I should read him---until now---and thank you so much for making it so real how I MUST!
Yes, it feels so ludicrous to say: "No one told me about this extremely famous, foundational writer!"…but that really is how I felt when I started reading him! I hope you can have your transformative Proust experience too
Thank you... I can hardly wait!
Proust has been on my reading list for a while now. Actually, many years ago, I read the first volume of his great novel, started the second, and - stopped for some reason. I don't remember why. But it's a long and challenging book, and life must have interfered. But I didn't mean to give up for good: I just set it aside temporarily, and then a year passed, and then another, and then many more. So, I tried again last year, but to my dismay, I discovered that my French was no longer at a sufficiently high level for Proust. (The funny thing is that I definitely *speak* French better than I did back then. Ah, but I don't read it as well!) So, now I'm trying to read some easier French books, to get my French where it needs to be so that I could try Proust once more.
Anyway, thanks for writing this. I guess that's Substack telling me not to give up!
If it isn't your first language, though, reading it in French must be so intimidating…I'm really impressed! Your comment actually reminded me of a lovely post on Helen DeWitt's blog, where she specifically writes about learning French through reading Proust: https://paperpools.blogspot.com/2010/04/la-recherche-de-marcel-proust.html
I found this post a few years ago and have always wanted to try reading Proust again, in the original…but my French is nowhere near good enough, so I too might need to find some easier French books. I was thinking Annie Ernaux?
Thank you for this lovely comment, and for sharing your Proust and French journey…genuinely very inspiring!
I read Proust while learning French, having recently moved to France, so I got to discover in real time which of his most common idioms are still common currency, and which make you sound like a crazy person in the boulangerie . . . For much easier but Proust-adjacent and still supremely good, I'd go with Maupassant. (The similar period means a lot of the trickier vocab is useful for both.)
thank you for this rec! I replied to Irena above, but I have also been wanting to improve my French reading skills to read À la récherche…choosing someone from a similar time period is such a good strategy
Older, more classical-style novel French is quite florid, dense; takes some extra devotion for us non-native speakers. Vas-y, bonne chance!
Wow. Half way through this I ran to my local library´s online catalogue to see if they had Swann´s Way so I could go borrow it on Monday -- they don´t! It´s been a while since I read about a book and immediately felt the need to hold it in my hands and be reading it NOW. But I´m also commenting because the passages of Proust you used reminded me of my favourite writer of all time - Simone de Beauvoir, and more specifically, her memoirs (and more specifically, the first one titled Memoirs of a dutiful daughter). I rarely hear people talk about them. I never met a person IRL who said to me, yes, I love those memoirs. I am patiently waiting for this experience, but I´ve been talking about these books since 2011 and it´s yet to happen. Where are my de Beauvoirs pals at?
She also has a very rich, and very dense language and a way of describing the most delicate moments of everyday... it´s not easy reading. But she will describe a porridge she used to have for breakfast as a child in a way that will make you stare into a distance and then come back for more on the page and feel alive. Yes, she had a full and exciting life in terms of external appearances (her work, writing, activism, relationships, etc) but all of these things are found in her writing alongside the very mundane and the daily. And she understood herself in a way that made my heart drop when I read her for the first time aged 20. I´ve read plenty of books since but the experience I had with her writing was of such a rare occurence, I don´t think I have felt anything similar until I discovered Lauren Groff last year.
Simone de Beauvoir is my nodal point. Lastly, fun fact, I´m not sure if I would ever read her if I didn´t see a quote from Memoirs of a dutiful daughter on Tumblr. Of course.
I know this is not in person, but: for a long time, I read everything I could get ahold of by Simone de Beauvoir. She said somewhere (it must have been in her memoirs, probably in the third volume) that two authors that she never tired of were Rousseau and, yes, Proust.
Thank you for commenting!
I also really love De Beauvoir’s memoirs, especially the first one, which I also read in my early twenties. I felt so seen by her, living in an environment where I did not always feel understood. You are definitely not the only fan! I started reading The Second Sex recently, and am also really loving that.
SIMONE FAN RIGHT HERE. Inhaled Dutiful Daughter then ordered rest of collection on eBay, skipped ahead to the one about her mother dying, debating whether to return to chronological order…
Ok I did the same order of reading!
One of these days I’ll get to it.
yes! or maybe some other book that can be Your Proust
Brilliant once again, Celine.
thank you!! always appreciate you reading
I'm so sorry, but what shade of lipstick do you use? I love it so much!
thank you! apologies for the kind of obnoxious response…so I used to use Byredo's Lascaux (which was a nice cool-toned deep red, almost burgundy?), which has been discontinued…I repurchased it 3 times so I'm heartbroken…
so this is actually a combo of Byredo's Redolence (cool toned but too much of a bright red) + Dries van Noten's Bohemian Scarlett (very dark-toned purple-burgundy, kind of gothic)…mostly because I had the latter languishing in my makeup drawer, unused
it's actually really annoying to combine 2 shades every morning lol so I need to find another lipstick that has the exact color I want!
I basically want something like this https://www.pinterest.com/pin/144959681746169005/ or this https://www.pinterest.com/pin/144959681736375521/
I absolutely adored this piece and really appreciate your work on it. Thanks for sharing!
thank you Elle!!! it was a real joy to write (well, also an immense struggle, as is the case with many writing projects) and I really appreciate you reading and commenting 🕊️
i read swann's way last summer and could never get myself really into it, mainly because it was while i was moving and traveling for work, so i definitely did not have the space and time to really absorb it. as im clearing out my shelves for another bigger move i had placed it in my give away pile but this article has now convinced me to give it another try 😀
and you have the chance I'd be really grateful if you gave my most recent novel a glance, ive released chapters of it weekly on here so it is free to do, I've been inspired a lot by joyce and george eliot and vonnegut and kerouac and allende and garcia marquez so as to give you an idea for what you might find. in any case, thanks for advocating for big L Literature, so much of our society is built on the suppression of intellectual pursuits to keep the masses more easily manipulated. indeed the framing of literature and philosophy as snobbish or bohemian pursuits of no earthly value serves this expertly. convince the ppl they shouldnt read anything more complicated than pop lit or on the basis of identity politics and they become much less adept at navigating the complex political atmosphere that ensures they remain just a cog in the machine.
Thank you for this really thoughtful comment! I really do agree that there is something valuable about Literature (it's able to express the complexity of human relations, society, politics in a way that short tweets and more disposable takes can't—even if those takes are more obviously relevant to 2025, they don't always create a deeper level of understanding…)
I read the first ch of your novel and will read the second ch shortly—I'm always interested in how people share short fiction or serialized fiction on Substack!
if* you have a chance oops
Proust <3 I have to admit, I'm always a little jealous when people say a book "changed their life" -- there are so many books I love but none I feel that I could definitively point to and say, I was *different* after reading this. Sometimes I worry this is evidence of a shallower form of engagement on my part, that there must be something I'm missing, but I think it's also just as likely it's due at least in part to my own hang-ups about language (what constitutes change, exactly? There are certain books I think about all the time, that I reference and refer to and that probably have shaped my consciousness in ways I'm not fully aware of.). But I like the idea of nodal points, and I think Proust would be one of mine, too, even though I've only read the first four volumes so far. I love how much of it is about the life we live in our head, the desires and fantasies we construct and protect and are inevitably disappointed by. I feel like I was lead to believe that In Search of Lost Time would be difficult reading when actually it's just long. I had no idea how funny it would be, either.
This also made me think about taste, and how I sometimes think a lack of a developed taste (not "good" taste, but "personal" taste) is what prevents people from having better reading (or movie-watching, or etc.) experiences. I often see people who like reading and/or want to get back into reading, but don't really seem to know how to find what to read beyond what's currently popular or easily accessible to them, and so they're often disappointed. In my experience, it takes time, and critical thinking, and going down a lot of rabbit holes, but knowing what you love, and where you can find it, and who you trust to recommend you something can make a huge difference! Anyway, this was way too long, but thanks for giving me a lot to think about!
I picked up Swann's Way at a secondhand bookshop a few months back and have been waiting for the right time to start. This might be the nudge I needed!
I love when it feels like the universe has produced a subtle, unmistakable sign to finally embark on a project…if you do read Swann's Way, I'd love to hear about it!
Which translation did you read? Loved your article! x
The one that begins with Lydia Davis and then continues with a new translator per volume! From Penguin. I really adore Lydia Davis and recommend her unreservedly