Proust and Food

Well-researched article about Proust and Food. I didn't know he spent the last years living on coffee and croissants. Well, there are worse things. Pepsi and French fries? Pizza and beer?

Consider.

Take a look: http://historicalbiographies.suite101.com/article.cfm/marcel_proust_and_food

The Other Odette

Proust and Hawthorns

I will have to seek out some blooming hawthorns this spring and revel in their Proustian essence. In the meantime, here is a link with a good Proust reference to England and hawthorns. We have no spring to speak of yet. A few tulips sticking their noses out of the ground, and not much sign of my daffodils yet. If I have anothr bulb disaster, that's it. No more attempts at springtime loveliness for Odette. The forsythia and the rhoddys will have to do.

See the blooming hawthorns. Lovely.

http://hudographies.blogspot.com/2009/03/blossom-is-here-readers.html

The Proust Project

If you're going to be in The Big Apple tomorrow, which, alas, I am not, you can (if tickets are available) take in The Proust Project. I would love to be there, but living near Beantown is not condusive to a quick trip to NYC and all that entails, like trains and a place to spend the night and tickets and, well, you know.

I just returned from Germany and finally have laundry under control, food in the house, everything unpacked and sort of put away, in short, just getting life back together and not up for spontaneous jaunt.

But here's the link. It sounds wonderful:

http://broadwayworld.com/article/CSC_Presents_THE_PROUST_PROJECT_Readings_Beginning_323_20090320

The Other Odette

Reading Proust Again

In snowy Foxborough, reading Proust passes the hour before bedtime. So I'm back reading. The endless reception is over. Grandma is dead. Marcel has been stood up by Mlle. Stenmaria. He's dining with St. Loup and there's a big do to about which room, and the Dreyfusards, and St. Loup is being SO attentive with respect to the vicuna cloak of the Prince de Foix and somehow climbing around the room so as now to step on anything. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? If you get my drift. (This is a clean blog.)

This scene in the restaurant is rather bizarre, and to me, the character of St. Loup doesn't really hang together very well.

And the Duchesse invited Marcel to dinner, and he held up the whole meal looking at the paintings of Elstir and the Duke didn't dare disturb him. Also, a little bizarre. Maybe I am having trouble getting back into the book. Everyone seems to behave a little oddly. No, a lot oddly.

Ye gods, I will be so glad when I have read the last 100 pages of the Guermantes Way. The

Duc de Guermantes also does not impress me nor does his ancestory. The snobbism in this part of the text is really pervasive. And the humor has taken flight.

Arrrrgh!

Odette