The "Little Phrase" rears its melodic head again

I have actually been reading the last volume of Proust and I do find it more enjoyable than all the many words about Albertine, who had become quite tiresome.  Now I love Ravel and will have to listen to this music.  Alas, the blog has gone quiet of late as I try to finish my own novel and deal with lots of challenges such as many houseguests, the garden, a torn rotator cuff and so on.

Take a look at this post and visit I-tunes.  Vinteuil Played a Sunny Melody

Reading Proust Aloud in Amherst

I have to hand it to this book group.  Reading Proust aloud (with a nice cup of tea) was a singular accomplishment.  The second time around they skipped a bit.  In my book (third reading) I'm going to skip the rest of Albertine.  Seems awfully repetitive and I have totally bogged down.  Onward.

Here is the link to the Amherst group.  They are a hardy, persistent group.

Reading Proust Aloud in Amherst

Amherst, like Foxborough is in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts where they know a thing or two about literature and persistence.

The Goethe-Institut Reads Proust

Last week  we heard a riveting talk on Proust at the Goethe- Institut on Beacon Street in Boston's Back Bay. Susanne Klingenstein rocked the room with her scholarly observations on Proust and how to read him. Much food for thought.  I had never entertained the idea that nature was strongly allied with sex for Proust, and I'll never read about those hawthorns the same way again.  Of course Odette's orchids were strongly sexual.  Klingenstein posited that some many of the characters behaved badly (or stupidly) in Proust due to ennui.   I am going to have to examine these thoughts with more reading.  The audience had read Proust in French, German and of course, English and had interesting ideas of its own.

Right now I am reading Rowling's The Cuckoo's Calling  and finding some of the same snide comments of London society that Proust delivered apropos Parisian society.   

I am wondering if there are any versions of Proust with quotation marks for dialog and with real paragraphs instead of that daunting dense text.  Anybody know?  

Must update my Proust library, as well, because Klingenstein recommended a couple books about him and reading him that had not crossed by radar.  Still mired in my academic years of yore, I fear. 

 I didn't catch the date, but the Goethe-Institut will read the last volume for discussion at a later date.  The reception that ends the book is my most favorite section. Can't wait to read it again, in fact I'm going to ditch dreary Albertine and head to the end.  It's not cheating, as I've read it before. 

Odette, the one with no orchids.

 

M. Proust's Library

New Proust book alert!  M. Proust's Library by Anka Muhlstein, Other Press, 141 pages, $19.95 

Joseph Epstein has a long, knowledgeable review of the book in the November 17-18 (2012) Wall Street Journal. 

Epstein mentions, what many of us know, that "no one should read Marcel Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time' for the first time."  This is a clever way of saying that the second reading is much more meaningful (you know the characters and the scope of the book) and are ready to get the deeper meaning of Proust, the humor, the art, music and yes, the books Proust mentions.  

We would be cultured and well-educated if we read all the classics that Proust read.  I do encourage you to find the review and better yet, to buy this book, as it looks like an excellent addition to anyone's Proust library. 

I am still dipping into Proust from time to time, but other required reading and  life, have conspired to slow this process down.  The long winter, I tell myself, will be perfect for some Proust reading. 

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers.  Off to get the turkey stuffed and into the oven.


Odette

Questions Marcel Proust Would Like to Ask You

So sad that the museum has no Proust letters and that the exhibit has been dismantled and "sent elsewhere."  

 This is a great post, and I salivate to have been on that tour!  Love this blogger's graphics.
 Questions Proust Would Like to Ask You

 I have the Painter biography by the way.  There's an entire shelf on the bookcase devoted to Proust and to James Joyce and T.S. Eliot. 


I read this week that Barak Obama was a big fan of Eliot's The Wasteland.  Me, too!  Also in college.   Well I daresay that he would be dubbed eliter than elitist should he start quoting Eliot.  Yikes!  Does anyone but English majors read that stuff anymore?  Hope so. 


Think I'll read some Proust tonight.  It's a long slog just to get through the magazines and newspapers that come to the house. 


Odette, the autre

Proust Bloggers Active Again

Here are a couple of Proust Blogs of interest this week.  I am using a new version of Blogger and feeling my way in.  Think I might like to return to the old.  Why does everyone fix things that aren't broken?

I am still working my way through Albertine living with the narrator in Paris.  Nothing new has happened.

The blogs, forthwith:  The Strangeness of Words

A Year of Reading Proust

I have been re-reading Proust for far longer than a year.  Over time, sort of like the novel.  Happy New Year to all.

Odette