Barnes and Noble Review:

Swann’s Way is the first novel of Marcel Proust’s seven-volume magnum opus À la recherche du temps perdu, or Remembrance of Things Past. Following the narrator’s opening ruminations about the nature of sleep is one of twentieth-century literature’s most famous scenes: the eating of the madeleine soaked in a “decoction of lime-flowers,” the associative act from which the remainder of the narrative unfurls. After elaborate reminiscences about his childhoodwith relatives in rural Combray and in urban Paris, Proust’s narrator recalls a story regarding Charles Swann, a major figure in his Combray childhood, and his escapades in nineteenth-century privileged Parisian society, revolving around his obsessive love for young socialite Odette de Crécy.

Filled with searing, insightful, and humorous criticisms of French society, this novel showcases Proust’s innovative prose style, characterized by lengthy, intricate sentences that elongate, stop, and reverse time. With narration that alternates between first and third person, Swann’s Way unconventionally introduces Proust’s recurring themes of memory, love, art, and the human experience—and for nearly a century readers have deliciously savored each moment.

Marcel Proust:

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (French pronunciation: [maʁsɛl pʁust]) (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, essayist, and critic, best known as the author of À la recherche du temps perdu (in English, In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past), a monumental work of twentieth-century fiction published in seven parts from 1913 to 1927.
- wikipedia

In Search of Lost Time:

In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past (French: À la recherche du temps perdu) is a semi-autobiographical novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its extended length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the “episode of the madeleine”. The novel is still widely referred to in English as Remembrance of Things Past, but the title In Search of Lost Time, a more accurate rendering of the French, has gained in usage since D.J. Enright’s 1992 revision of the earlier translation by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin.

Begun in 1909, finished just before his death in 1922, and published in France between 1913 and 1927, many of the novel’s ideas, motifs, and scenes appear in adumbrated form in Proust’s unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil (1896–99), and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908–09). The novel has had a pervasive influence on twentieth-century literature, whether because writers have sought to emulate it, or attempted to parody and discredit some of its traits. In it, Proust explores the themes of time, space, and memory, but the novel is above all a condensation of innumerable literary, structural, stylistic, and thematic possibilities. Proust died before completing his revisions of the drafts and proofs of the final volumes. His brother Robert had the final three volumes edited, and they were published posthumously.

-wikipedia

Legacy:

In Search of Lost Time is considered the definitive Modern novel by many scholars, and it had a profound effect on subsequent writers such as the Bloomsbury Group.[2] “Oh if I could write like that!” marveled Virginia Woolf in 1922 (2:525). Proust’s influence on Evelyn Waugh is manifest in A Handful of Dust (1934) in which Waugh entitles Chapter 1 “Du Cote de Chez Beaver” and Chapter 6 “Du Cote de Chez Tod.”[3] More recently, literary critic Harold Bloom wrote that In Search of Lost Time is now “widely recognized as the major novel of the twentieth century.”[4] Vladimir Nabokov, in a 1965 interview, named the greatest prose works of the 20th century as, in order, “Joyce’s Ulysses, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Biely’s Petersburg, and the first half of Proust’s fairy tale In Search of Lost Time.”[5] J. Peder Zane’s book The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, collates 125 “top 10 greatest books of all time” lists by prominent living writers; In Search of Lost Time places eighth.[6]

Since the publication in 1992 of a revised English translation by The Modern Library, based on a new definitive French edition (1987–89), interest in Proust’s novel in the English-speaking world has notably increased. Two substantial new biographies have appeared in English, by Edmund White and William C. Carter, and at least two books about the experience of reading Proust have appeared, by Alain de Botton and Phyllis Rose. The Proust Society of America, founded in 1997, now has three chapters: at The Mercantile Library of New York City,[7] the Mechanic’s Institute Library in San Francisco,[8] and the Boston Athenæum Library. The French phenomenologist, Merleau-Ponty, frequently refers to Swann’s Way to help elucidate his own ideas.
-wikipedia

My Review:
Proust’s work consists of seven volumes. I have only read the first volume. This book is not for the casual reader. I say it’s like “Finnegan’s Wake” by James Joyce. It’s truly a literary classic and a book read by English Lit. grad students. I would need to take a class or read critiques and articles about the book to fully comprehend what I read. This was a good translation. Lydia Davis, the translator, received numerous awards for her translation. The footnotes were very helpful. I have two and a half pages, back and front, full of GRE words. OMG, it’s not for the faint of heart. If you’re not an English Lit. student, this book may be difficult to read. I read it rather slowly because of the GRE words, the historical references, the footnotes, and Proust’s serpentine way of writing.

In order to truly understand this book you would have to immerse yourself in Proust’s world, near the turn of the 20th century in France. He makes references to many playwrights, artists, musicians, authors, and politicians of that time. He also makes references to other cultural phenomena from early centuries. He’d mention a play by like Racine or Dumas. Or he’d mention a painting by an artist. And without having read, listened, seen any of these historical references, you can’t truly comprehend what he’s trying to say. Had I lived in France during that time and was part of his society, perhaps I would have fully grasped what he was saying. As it is I have a list of paintings, books, musical compositions, plays, and politicians that I have to look up and figure out their meaning in relation to Proust’s world. It would have been nice to see the paintings and musical compositions he describes.

His themes have to do with memory, time, art, nature, even homosexuality. This book was composed of three parts. In the first part the narrator is an older man that writes about his boyhood days in Combray. He masterfully writes serpentine passages about his memories. He’ll associate his memories with the natural landscape surrounding Combray. His sentences are very long. He describes his emotions and memories in relation to let’s say Hawthorn flowers or two steeples in town. He’ll wax poetic constantly. His memories are immersed in the natural landscape of that time.

The second part is about Monsieur Swann and his difficult love affair with Odette de Crecy. Swann is a neighbor of the young boy in Combray. This part was my favorite. In this part Proust makes many references to works of art, music, literature of the times and times gone by, especially in relation to Swann’s emotions and memories. Odette is a woman of ill-repute. She’s not even Swann’s type, but he falls madly in love with her. Again he uses nature and artistic allusions in describing the relationship between Swann and Odette. They have a special song they share, by Vinteuil. Swann’s emotions are heightened every time this piece is played. Once he went to a soiree without Odette and this song was being played by a small orchestra. Proust described masterfully how the song reflects his love for Odette.

The third book returns back to the narrator who describes once again the young boy and his meeting with Swann’s daughter Gilberte. It’s rather brief. It’s entitled “Place names-Names.”

Here are the last two sentences of this volume:
“The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.”

Because in the last four or five pages of the book the narrator is no longer the young boy, but an older man regretting the passage of time and how everything changed since his boyhood days, like the arrival of automobiles.

It was a very interesting book. I’ll have to search for articles on this particular volume to understand it in more detail. There were many lovely passages where he’ll use art or music or the natural landscape to describe a particular memory or emotion. Long passages.

If I had read the books Proust mentioned, seen the art he referenced, as well as the songs, the natural landscape and politics of that time, I would have understood the book more fully. This book is over a 100 years old. And takes place about 130 years ago.

Anyway, I’ll read more articles about it. And I’ll pick up his second volume on my next book run.

His books give you a singular view of life in France for the bourgeoisie during the late 19th century. Reading the book is like being transported to a different world.

I don’t know any other authors who use art in all its forms and nature and landscapes to describe memories and emotions. Maybe Virginia Woolf, but I’ve only read two of her books. I’ve been meaning to read all her books.

Anyway, some good critical essays of the book as well as articles would be helpful. I hope they contain pictures of the paintings mentioned. And I’d love to hear Swann and Odette’s special sonata. And of course I’d love to return to France to the specific locations he describes in so much detail.

It was like reading a memoir. It’s semi-autobiographical.

I’m not rating this book because it’s a classic and I think I’m too ignorant to truly grasp what a monumental masterpiece it is.

Again, it’s not for the faint of heart.

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