Thankful for Proust and Proust Bloggers

Bookishness continues his Proust blog. Sue Grafton advises writers to pay attention to minor characters, as Proust does in spades.

http://charlesmatthews.blogspot.com/2009/11/proust-project-day-5.html

Th Cork-lined Room also keeps Proust blogging on a high level:

http://thecorklinedroom.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/the-desires-that-had-surrounded-me-a-short-time-ago-to-go-to-guermantes-to-travel-to-be-happy-were-so-far-behind-me-now-that-their-fulfillment-would-not-have-brought-me-any-pleasure/

Moi? I'm organizing for Thanksgiving. Need a Francoise of my own. And one of these days, a cork-lined room.

The Other Odette

Ten pages a day

Actually, ten pages per day of Proust is a fairly ambitious goal, unless one has scads of leisure, and who has that.

I haven't read anything for the past ten or so days. Life intrudes. Lately, while sipping a late afternoon glass of wine, I fall asleep in front of the food channel. When I wake up, I don't know where I am (the living room). How can this be?

Read this: http://charlesmatthews.blogspot.com/2009/11/proust-project.html

The Guermantes Way

Someone else is slogging through the receptions and dinner parties. Doesn't seem to mind.

http://www.litkicks.com/ProustIII/

I'm getting into the next volume, but not in any serious way. Oh for the days when I could sit down and read War and Peace from cover to cover over the holidays. Why has that become so impossible.

Dunno. Onward.

Dissing Proust in Foxborough

This blog presents all opinions, even the anti-Proust.

By the way, I read some more of "Sodom" the other night, and holey-shamoley, there's another Guermantes reception as an alert reader had warned. Although this one with homo-erotic overtones is more interesting than those that went before.

Here is Gemaine Greer in wrath and finery:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/nov/08/germaine-greer-proust

The other Odette

New Proust Blogger

Here is a link to a new Proust blogger. Do we read Proust for fun? Why not? Fun is where you find it, but not usually in 300+ word sentences.

Proust is fun, when the humor or quirky observations strike, and the feeling, such as when the Grandmother dies, is also compelling. Not so, the endless receptions and dinner parties. Maybe they are so long to make them boring like in real life.

When I was a very young bride, my husband's office manager threw exceedingly boring Christmas parties, and we always went, and I tried to find creative reasons to cut out early. The guests were all stodgy middle-aged types and I was 22 for cryin' out loud. We were always told that after we left, "things really got going." I don't think so. Maybe Proust's parties are so long to convey the tediousness and the boredom.

SHOW, DON'T TELL. I get it!

Here is the link: http://readproust.blogspot.com/