Still Reading Proust

I pick up The Cities of the Plain sometimes before bedtime and read a few pages.  The narrator is back in Balbec, and Albertine blows hot an cold and lots of stuff about the "liftboy."  I'm waiting for an evening with the Verdurins to unfold soon. 


Another Proust reader comments in his blog:  http://zukointheworld.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/still-reading-proust/


"Still reading Proust"  is a state of being.  The summer passes apace, with trips, house guests, gardening, bird watching and lots of meals on the grill.   
It's amazing to think that Proust and his friends never knew the delights of a meal cooked over charcoal, nor did a lot of people until The Thrill of the Grill hit us.  I knew someone who used a hibatchi and grilled steaks and teriyaki meat sticks many, many moons ago.  My parents cooked trout in a cast iron skillet over a campfire, trout they had caught just hours before.  I never expect to taste trout like that again, but if I did, surely there would be the Proustian experience of Sweetwater Lake and the funky cabins and the wood rat who worried so that my Dad (the tenderest of tender hearts) would harm her and her babies.  He took the wood out of the box and left the critters be. 


The trout was dipped in a mixture of cornmeal and flour and probably friend in bacon fat, maybe Crisco.  How far away those days of my childhood are.