Saturday, June 09, 2007

A Funny Feeling of Deja Vu

http://mleddy.blogspot.com/2007/06/living-inside-time.html

This this week I read the same passage in Proust and thought about it. The father gives permission and the son is taken aback. Are all sons prodigal?

Reminds me of an old old joke: Who regretted it most when the prodigal son returned home?
The fatted calf.

Meeting friends for lunch, then getting ready for a dinner party chez Odette. Nothing fancy. Steaks on the grill, Hasselback potatoes, salad and my own invention of a dessert which involves Pillsbury piecrust from the dairy case and fresh fruit and a little sugar. Sometimes the best food is the simplest. Not pineapple and truffles. Sheeesh!

As ever,

Odette

3 comments:

Michael Leddy said...

Hi Odette,

I'm beginning to wonder whether pineapple-and-truffles involves a glitch in translation. If I find out, I'll let you know.

Enjoy your dinner!

Grapeshot/Odette said...

I suspect a glitch in translation. Early in Swann's Way I found another food item translated "weird." I am reading the old, old Scott Montcrief translation. One of these days I will try Lydia Davis or yet another translation. My volumes are really old (1932). Volume 2 is marked $2.00. Now I am wondering if I picked them up when the old Sea Men's (seamen's?)Library in Galveston was broken up. Ah memory! I once had one of those books which had survived the great Galveston hurricane. It reeked of mustiness.

Michael Leddy said...

I checked the French text online: "la salade d'ananas et de truffes" -- so it seems right. I wondered, as there are also online references to pineapple truffles (something recognizably dessert-like). But it's a salad, right?

With every word I type, I'm revealing the distance between these eating habits and me.

The Penguin translations are wonderful, though Grieve (vol. 2) seems kinda free.