Found a new (to me) Proust book.  It looks interesting, although I am always a bit suspicious of academic writing with its long (sometimes tedious) sentences and big words, but let's not make an apriori (ha! ha!) judgement, because the book does seem readable.  Reading Proust at Oxford

The book is actually about reading in Proust.  Reading Reading Proust at Oxford? How circuitous!
 


I am still reading about Marcel and the sleeping Albertine.  Marcel isn't reading; he is watching.  Is Albertine  like a princess who will awaken from a kiss?  Albertine is a very human girl with faults and tics.  I can perfectly understand why she lies all the time.  She probably never envisioned the (somewhat) creepy household and practically being a captive in it.  Granted, a captive in good clothes.  She has very little life.  Or does she?  The narrator is obsessed with her, suspecting her of lesbianism, but then he suspects everyone.  One gets the idea that everyone in Paris is at least bi-sexual.  Maybe they were.  What do I know? 


Suspicions and imagination run rampant in the narrator's mind.  That's what happens to a writer.  He can't stop imagining.  What if?  

Albertine Sleeping

I just read the section of  Proust where he goes on for pages about watching Albertine sleep.  Very lyrical and touching, really.   Albertine is still mysterious to me, and also to the narrator.  But one can see her in Balbec with her jaunty cap and nose in the air on her bike.   Those girls who he found so fetching, and now one is asleep in his bed.  This is a wonderful passage. 

Reading a bit of Proust off and on before bedtime.  Albertine comes and goes.  He refuses to accompany her but he is suspicious of her errands.   He consults the Duchess for clothing ideas for his mistress.  What a crazy life.                        

Happy Thanksgiving to my readers who celebrate Thanksgiving, and if you don't, well, pause a minute and consider your blessings:  relatives, friends, hearth, work, hobbies, nature, sports, whatever gives you succor and pleasure.

Onward,

Grapeshot