Happy Belated Birthday, Marcel

Alas!  I missed Proust's birthday. Too frantically busy trying to get my novel formatted, final proofs, final spell check, final edits, and some PR.  Crazy time. Heat wave, too.  

Found a good birthday post which I'm passing on to you. 

The Proust news of late has been ho-hum. Waiting for something rip-roaring to happen, although Proust and rip-roaring are not usually juxtaposed together.  

I'm still working my way through the Albertine book. One of thse days. In the meantime, I read other stuff, some good, some just O.K.  Do pick up the novel, HEFT.  It was really good. You'll like it. 

In the meantime, here's Proust: The Greatest Novelist of the 20th Century: Marcel Proust

Albertine Ensconced in Marcel's Family Apartment In Paris

So one is reading along and eveything is pretty much as usual . . . Mme. Verdurin and her parties and who's in and who's out and Marcel mentions Vintieul and Albertine mentions that she know his sister and her friend! 

If you read Proust you know that this is powerful and unwelcome news.  Marcel hightails it away from Balbec and back to not-so-gay-Paree faster than you can utter "Le petite phrase."   He's got to get Albertine away from those bad women. 

At last a little action, and I segue from The Cities of the Plain into The Captive.   Now the Duchesse de Guermantes is recommending clothes  for the young lady, and mama  and Francoise are tut-tutting, and Marcel doesn't go out.  What are things coming to?

Movement in fiction is a good thing.   Albertine is first described on her bicycle.  That Proust guy knew a thing or two, didn't he?    

Better Than Any Ambien

Yesterday was an early to rise day, and we watched "Mad Men," and finally at 11:30 I climbed into bed. Tried to read a little more of the endless reception in The Guermantes Way. Before I was through a page, yea, even a paragraph (we know M.P. can write ultra-long paragraphs) I had the sensation of eyes closing, page unread, and into dreamland it was.

Not the first time this has happened. Will I ever finish The Guermantes Way?

One blogger has issues with The Prisoner, which I know as The Captive. If confessions are in order, I admit that I always found this one of the more tedious volumes of the novel. Tedious the max.

On starting Proust’s Prisoner:

http://gaiawriter.blogspot.com/2008/09/starting-marcel-prousts-prisoner.html

Here is another blogger's response:
Thoughts from Proust, AKA a “Frenchman.”
http://www.mindblink.org/2008/09/thoughts-from-frenchman-oui.html

I am going to survive Mme. Villeparisis party eventually. I think.

Odette, who showed up at the reception and spoke to Marcel who was rather tongue-tied.