Proust on film

I saw the dramatization of Proust's last "book" in Cambridge, MA several years ago.  Catherine Deneuve played Odette, a casting that would never have occurred to me.  The film was quite good. There were no car chases, no explosions, no blood and gore, and I don't think there was a seventeen year old in the house.  Just a hushed, reverent audience. 

Here is a link to an NYTimes article about the man who created the film. A Mild Mannered Maniac. 


The last volume of the great tome is, to my mind, the best, and I found the great denouement utterly thrilling. 


The Other Odette

The Funniest Man in Paris

The humor in Proust is always surprising and sometimes barbed but often rather diffident.  I totally missed it in my first two passes through the great Oeuvre.  Here is a blogger who didn't miss a thing.  The Verdurins certainly come in for their share of having fun poked at them.  Jeez, sometimes you really have to jump through hoops to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition.

The Funniest Man in Paris

Eating Madelines in Seattle

Or how about a petite madeline with a cuppa tea in Paris?  On the subject of madelines, I must confess that I've had the molds for ever so long, but have yet to screw up my courage to actually make some.  I think this is because I read a recipe saying you must only make enough batter to fill the madeline molds in one baking session, because the batter absolutely did not keep for a second batch an hour or so later.

Seemed like a difficult task with  a high rate of failure.  One of these days I'll throw caution to the wind and whip up a batch.  Take a photo.  Let you know how they are.  I do not expect a Proustian experience, no that would come with my grandma's fried chicken or tomatoes from the garden.  Maybe her strawberry jam.   It would only be something my grandma cooked.  She never used a recipe and her short pudgy fingers moved so deftly, whether she was making bread or flouring a frying chicken.

Here is the article from the Seattle paper.  And many of us have read Proust, multiple times, in English and French and for all I know maybe Croation.  Eating Madelines with Proust in Seattle