If You Have A First Edition of Proust, You're in Luck

A First Edition of Proust recently hit the auction block.  Yikes!  This is not chump change.


 Lucky buyer lucky seller World Record for Proust First Edition if Swann's Way
I have an ancient edition of two volums of the entire novel that I bought in Houston when I attended Rice.  In those days of yore, I  patronized a bookstore that had many books from the Seamen's Library in Galveston.  Some of them were waterlogged, so they might have gone though the great hurricane.  My copy of Proust (in English) is a bit ratty but holding its own.  Been read a lot.

How is YOUR copy  of Proust?  Is it a First Edition?  You are in luck. 

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

On the Road with Proust

Kristen Stewart on the Road  Proust and  Kerouac are an unlikely pair, maybe even an unholy won, and I don't think      the Beats read Proust.  Well, maybe they did; who am I to say? 

For some  (old) but dishy gossip, with only one small mention of Proust, here is a book you probably don't need to read after you read the review.   Three American Girls in Paris                                                

It must be the silly season with all these frivolous mentions of Proust.   I am sorry to report that my reading of the masterpiece has been halted due to other reading, houseguests, travel, getting a book ready for publication, cooking and entertaining and well, you know . . . stuff.  But  I'm just stalled not bailing.

By the way, the town of Foxborough is beseiged by big, bad wolf Steve Wynn, who wants to build a behemoth casino here.   We would rather read Proust than deal with drunks, hookers,  and pawn shops.  I mean, really.

Odette, somewhat on her high horse. 

Packing Up Proust's Apartment

Another Youtube video, with good commentary.  Oh, to have a cultivated British voice.

Proust's Apartment

A Proust Week

 Here in Foxborough, not far from the Massachusetts coastline, we are preparing for Hurricane Irene.  However neither storm nor earthquake  can keep us from Proust, who received his own share of PR this week. 


First, there was a description with photos of the famous Cork Lined Room.  A Visit To The Cork Lined Room .  Fortunately, the blogger took time to sample some restaurants.  Proust would approve. 


Next, there's a  Proust meetup in L.A.  How cool is that?  Marcel would be intrigued.  I Love Proust in LA.   Unfortunately, Foxborough is too far away from Tinseltown to make it practical or economical to join the group, alas. 


Next, some sad news.  The director of "Time Regained,"  Raul Ruiz has died.  He just had a new movie out too.   Raul Ruiz dies . 



Your faithful correspondent has been reading Proust again, still in Balbec and La Raspelier, and the humor is lovely and subtle and I am enjoying it ever so much.  Proust is so sly and so witty.  


The Other Odette

It's Holy Week--time to read about Proust's visit to Tante Leonie

An alert blogger's post reminded me of some of the best passages in Proust, as the narrator and his family visited Tante Leonie for Holy Week.

No hawthorne's blooming in Foxborough yet, but the forsythia is coming and I have garlic plants, put in the ground last fall, that are peeking out of the garden soil, as are the tulips, those the rabbits haven't eaten, jonquils, and (now blooming) crocus.  Spring is so exciting.  I feel my blood rising with the maple sap which apparently rose early and outfoxed everyone.  The spring peeper's broke into their shrill chorus early, too, and the chipmunks came out of hibernation.  Birds pairing off.  Love it! 



Here is the Great Proust Blog 
and an lovely web site, too.  


The Other Odette

Remembrance of Crimes Past

This blog received a citation as one of the 100 best blogs about mystery novels. While it is true that I write crime fiction and that I have another blog that frequently discusses writing and the writing life, Reading Proust in Foxborough is unrelated to mystery novels.

Nonetheless, not wishing to give offense, I put the little sticker at the bottom of the blog. Do you think the purveyor of best blogs believes Proust to be a mystery writer? Of course, in his way he is. There is a mystery at the heart of any novel. Are there crimes in the great work? Mostly the crimes careless people wreak upon one another, crimes of the heart, crimes of the ego. crimes of passion, if you will. What book does not contain those crimes?

Maybe someone thinks Foxborough is a prison, like Walpole, our neighboring town.

Remembrance of Crimes Past? I thought so.

Mystified. And a little pleased.

Odette, the other one

Life As Lived By Proust

This blogger has a fascinating take on Marcel's relationship with women, and I think he's right. Consider the Duchess de Guermantes.

http://blog.guterman.com/2009/09/15/on-observing-vs-living-life/

Reading Proust on the Train

Reading Proust on the train enabled a young woman to find a literary agent. No wonder I've had no luck in that regard. I read Proust in bed late at night.

I began volume two, but only read a page before drifting off. It will be another long slog until Time Regained, my absolute favorite of all Proust's work.

http://www.27east.com/story_detail.cfm?id=231144&town=Hampton%20Bays&n=Local%20author%20to%20read%20excerpts%20from%20latest%20novel%20at%20Sag%20Harbor%20bookstore

Maybe you should read Proust on the train.

Odeette

At Long Last, Fini

I did it! Last night during the rain delay of the Red Sox game against Detroit, I finished The Guermantes Way, finally arriving at the scene where a dying Swann appears and the Guermantes pooh-pooh his problems and fixate on their evening plans. The Duchess, Oriane, runs back inside for the red shoes that will match her dress. The Duc, Basin, is such an upper class twit, and the entire scene is priceless, even worth the endless slog of hundreds of pages through the boring parties and receptions and upper class snobbery.

Proust really knows how to end a scene. I loved it. Now onward to the second volume. I have an ancient (ancien) copy in two volumes. It took me forever to get through the Guermantes. I wavered. I procrastinated. I read two pages per week. I became a Proust slacker. No more.

Of course, posting to the blog has been difficult with so little progress through the great novel.

August 11 is the great turnaround. Enfin!

Delirious with accomplishment,

Odette

Summer Proust Blogging

Lately, I haven't found many Proust blogs worth reporting on, but here is a young blogger who reads and quotes Proust:

http://tastymorselsoflife.blogspot.com/2009/07/places-that-we-have-known-people-we.html

For a wonderful Proust essay read Travel in a Garden (link below). In Foxborough as in the rest of New England, gardens are drying out after the June deluges, unremitting and omnipresent. New England looks like England with so much greenery.

http://travelinagarden.blogspot.com/2009/07/du-cote-de-chez-swann-combray-marcel.html

Cheers!

Odette, whose Proust reading has again, alas, fallen on evil days.

Reading Proust In Paris

Sigh. Reading P. in Paris so much more inspiring than here in Foxborough. Actually, I am back at the great work again, trying to finish The Guermantes. Mon Dieu, the drivel about the Guermantes that I've had to plough through, and it has been exceedingly wet to plough, which you understand if, unlike the narrator, you've been involved in farm life.

Nonethless, the end is in sight. I haven't been inspired by any blogs until this one. Ah, Paris and Proust. How sweet it is!

http://readingin.blogspot.com/2009/06/reading-proust-in-paris.html

The other Odette

Kiss A Cloud

More Proust readers are popping up. Maybe the hawthornes are in bloom. I have to confess that this is the time of year I most often think of Proust's blooming hedges.

http://kissacloud.blogspot.com/2009/04/swanns-way-by-marcel-proust.html

There is a great chain of Proust readers, and when one says adieu to Marcel, another introduces herself. We are all ages and nationalities, and we all love Proust. It's not a religion, exactly, but we all carry the torch.

The other Odette

The Proust Project

If you're going to be in The Big Apple tomorrow, which, alas, I am not, you can (if tickets are available) take in The Proust Project. I would love to be there, but living near Beantown is not condusive to a quick trip to NYC and all that entails, like trains and a place to spend the night and tickets and, well, you know.

I just returned from Germany and finally have laundry under control, food in the house, everything unpacked and sort of put away, in short, just getting life back together and not up for spontaneous jaunt.

But here's the link. It sounds wonderful:

http://broadwayworld.com/article/CSC_Presents_THE_PROUST_PROJECT_Readings_Beginning_323_20090320

The Other Odette

Reading Proust in Foxborough

This blog has a fair number of readers in countries outside the U.S., and for them and other far flung worshippers at the shrine of Proust, I'm posting a photo of the Foxborough village green.

Maybe I'll post a photo some time of the very famous Foxborough Stadium where the New England Patriots play football.

Foxborough is an old Massachusetts town that had a foundry where cannon balls were made during the revolutionary war. Then it became famous for making straw hats. The Foxboro company, now mostly known as Invensys, is the largest business in town these days. We have new shopping and the town is always changing.

I frequently blog about the herd of Scottish Highland Cattle that live around the corner from us. We also hear a rooster crow, and a slough and wetlands are behind the house, so Foxborough is still quite rural.

Odette

A Fantastic Proust Post

Sometimes one can troll the 'Net for weeks and find nothing original or of interest, and some days you hit pay dirt. This was one of those days. I found the post below so interesting. Proust and Football. Who would have thunk it?

If you don't read anything else today, read this:
http://onscreen-scientist.com/?p=12

Regretfully, my own Proust reading has hit a bad spell, what with helping someone in the household recover from surgery, etc. I am doing his chores, my chores, and a whole passel of extra chores. The good part is I've lost 3 pounds, running around and esp. up the stairs 30 times a day. Who knew?

Spring cometh to Foxborough and the goldfinches are on the feeder and they are even gold, not winter drab. The spring peepers began their sweet but noisy chorus last night. We had a damp warm day yesterday, and the suet and thistle seed I put out (his chore) found favor with the flocks.

Until next week, Marcel,

Votre Lecteur

Odette

Do French Scholars Read Proust?

updated 10/31/07

Apparently they (scholars) skim Proust. Kind of heavy lit to "skim." I think Professor Bayard is teasing the interviewer. In fact, they seem to be having a vicious little fliration. He is photographed all in black of course. Just like Bernard Henri Levi. Wonder if they know each other.

Inquiring minds want to know:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/magazine/28wwln-Q4-t.html?ref=magazine

The man is saying Proust is unreadable and Proust is eminently readable. What's a reader to do? Plow ahead. I see nothing wrong with dipping in here and there. Seems like that was how I read Proust the first time. Granted, the dips were extended ones, kind of like swimming the channel but not the Atlantic.

I am back with Madame Proust, and trying to figure out what to make of all this mother and son business, and how the parents learned he was gay and all the pussing footing around and then suddenly weird four letter words tossed into letters. It's like I'm reading two books at once. Or something.

I have to confess there are beaucoup books I've read and forgotten. Lots of popular fiction is throw-away, read and forget. I won't forget The Poisonwood Bible, however. Or Lost Time.

In my writing life (yes, there is that), I need to read a couple of books in the next week, enter the Gather/Borders contest and work on my web page, so Proust and I may not meet until mid-November, but Madame Proust will be my companion. She is an interesting woman in her own right and the family life seems typical and yet a little strange.

I am perplexed, but that is nothing new.

Onward.

It's great to be a member of Red Sox Nation. What a team! What a game! What heart they displayed! I couldn't go to sleep last night from the late hour excitement. But then I had HTML dreams.

Weirdly,

Odette

Albertine Murdered?

The variety of Proust musings is truly staggering. A blurb on Milan Kundera, a mountain hike and the mysterious lady.

http://thegayrecluse.com/2007/10/07/on-milan-kundera-and-how-our-killing-of-albertine-is-the-least-of-his-problems/

I continue my trek through Madame Proust. It's lonely reading Proust in Foxborough.

Odette