I found Proust on Flickr!

Three ways of reading Proust
What would Marcel, the narrator think of e-books and the Kindle?  


My novel of technology and desire, The Shadow Warriors, just came out on the Kindle for $2.99.  Below is the link.  The novel is framed by an "Info War" that is disrupting life world wide after malicious software agents penetrate computer systems.  My sleuth is a computer security sleuth, and she bites off more than she can chew, romance-wise as well as with some scary new technology.  


Here are some excerpts from reviews of the trade paperback and a link to the Amazon Kindle website.  This book marries technology, story-telling, international travel, even food.  What's not to like? 

All of the characters are believable and richly crafted, and the plot is something you might find in an Ian Fleming novel: taking us to foreign cities and cultures, rich with language and cuisine that are reflected delightfully within the prose.”  Odyssey Reviews

“A techno-thriller for men AND women.”  Al Past, Reviewer

“I found the description of computer sleuthing and the development of soft-ware weapons that would bring the cyber universe to its knees hit the right balance between technology and a rip-roaring good story.”  Scott Kimmich, Reviewer

“. . . I could believe in each of the characters and their interrelationships and also because Copek's Raymond Chandlerish repartee is witty without being wearing.”  Lowell Thing, WhatIs

“This is an excellent fast-paced cyberthriller, full of deceptions and high-tech intrigue.”  Kestrel

The Shadow Warriors

End of BSP, i.e. blatant self-promotion, and back to Proust and the Guermantes and the Verdurins and Cottard and all of our French friends.

Recipe for Madeleines

I found my madeleine molds, so there is no longer an excuse not to make them.  The molds are so petite, and the cookies will be extremely delicate.  Hope my cooking skills are up to the task.  The spirit of Proust will guide me.  I think this is an old recipe from the Sunday New York Times, possibly under Craig Claiborne's reign.


Madelines
4 eggs at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled


1.  Grease well and flour pans for for dozen madelines.  If only have as many pans are avilable, cut the recipe in half and make the second batch after the first is completed.  This is because the butter, on standing, settles and causes a heavy rough bottom layer.  Place racks near the bottom of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. 


2.  Beat the eggs with the salt, adding sugar gradually until the mixture is pale and very thick.  The mixture drops from the beaters to form a rope that gradually disappears.  Add vanilla. 


3.  Sift about one-quarter of the flour at a time over egg mixture.  Fold it in until no more flour show. 


4.  Add the butter, about a tablespoon at a time and fold it in as quickly as possible.  Fill the prepared pans about three-quarters full, place in oven immediately and bake until brown, about 10 minutes.


Yield:  About four dozen. 


Somewhat intimidating, no?  We shall see what happens. 

Reading Proust On Trains

I am still plowing through the Verdurin's dinner party at Raspelier, the country place high on the bluffs overlooking the Atlantic not too far from Balbec.  So far I've gleaned the menu partially consists of a) bouillabaise,  b) a fish and c) a strawberry concoction for dessert.  Mme. Verdurin is as always, vain and cunning and cruel as is her mate.  They haven't changed much since they savaged Swann.  


A comic moment was when the hostess mentioned Elstir's wife-to-be was a common "streetwalker" and Elstir, the painter, fell out of favor.  Odette, of course, was a courtesan whose favor they shamelessly curried at the expense of poor Swann.   Ah, the irony. 


We are reading and blogging Proust in Foxborough, and here is a gentleman who reads Proust on trains, maybe even in Arkansas, a state not normally on my radar, and  one I do not associate with Proust. 
Take a look for yourself.  Reading Proust on Trains  

I see the blogger has used the same photo of Proust that I have.  Hmmmm.  Must put Proust and blogging on the back burner for some Christmas cookies.  More anon. 

Odette

Blogging Proust for the Holidays

I've been reading Proust before bedtime, and somehow, now we are at an endless dinner party at the Verdurin's rented house  in the neighborhood of Balbec, at least close enough for a short train ride (with complications).  The Verdurin's decorating is critiqued.  A fish is served for dinner.  The food is seldom mentioned.  I guess that is because the conversation is so scintillating or that everyone is jockeying for social position and might as well be eating cardboard.


Except that these people are FRENCH!   Can you believe it?  I would so love to know what is served?  Of course Mrs. V. doesn't cook it herself, mais non!  Charlus is there and Cottard and the part of the "little clan" that summers in Balbec or environs.  It is amazing sometimes, that Proust can write so freakin' many words and yet neither the house nor characters are not offered much physical description.  Everything is in the head.  Not how we write today.  No talking heads allowed.  Nope.  None. 


A couple of blogs have caught my eye and you might want to check them out.  And I haven't forgotten my promise to publish the Madeline recipe.  Bear with me.

The Prisioner

Vision in Combray: Proust Beyond the Madeleines Concluded \\

I am looking forward to progress in Sodom and Gomorrah and then on to the rest of the books, because the last one is the best but one has to "earn" it by reading the whole work.  

Odette  

 

Proust and Long Sentences

One of the reasons reading Proust is such a challenge is the length of his sentences, and no quotes and paragraphs that go on for pages.  Not easy for today's reader.  You just have to get into the groove as this blogger points out so well. 


Proust's Sentences


It's the time of year (and a cold winter already in Europe and New England) when Proust's bundling up in scarves and overcoats seems positively sane.  


Stay warm!  


Odette

Review of Proust's Overcoat

You might consider giving Proust's Overcoat to your literate friends for a holiday present.  Here is a review to ponder. 

Proust's Overcoat




By the way, this is the season to whip up a batch of Madelines.  I'll post the recipe soon.  Stay tuned.

Who Wrote Vinteuil' s Sonata?

Interesting blog on the oft-researched Sonata with the "petite phrase,"  the love song for Swann and Odette. 


Who Wrote Vinteuil's Sonata

The Shadow Warriors

I am pleased to announced that my novel of technology and desire, The Shadow Warriors, will soon be available on the Kindle.  In time for Christmas, I hope.  Information Warfare is just as relevant in 2010 as it was in the 90's when I began writing the book. 

Proust's Religion

Proust and Religion  


Imagery yes, dogma no.


A blogger posts about religion and Proust.  Well, Proust did like churches.  I  thought of Proust today in the supermarket when I saw the pineapple all slice or chunked and ready for salads.  Proust was fond of a pineapple salad with weird ingredients.


I would so have loved it if he ever mentioned the food served at some of the soirees, but he never breathes a word.  They could have been eating Chinese take-out.  But of course, they weren't. Damn.  Inquiring minds want to know.


Odette

Reading Practically Everyone in Dedham

The weekend of the New England Crimebake in Dedham, MA, a conference for crime writers (and readers). Good this year with Charlaine Harris, Dennis Lehane, Catherine Hall Page, Julia Spencer-Fleming and other great New England Crime Writers.  And editors and agents, too.  Such fun to hang out at the bar and talk writing, shoes, robot vacuum cleaners, writing, New York, the Yankees, the Red Sox, various presses, writing, and well, yanno. . . . 


I pitched my latest almost complete oeuvre, which I had to go back and fix after the main character killed the bad guy.  Man, that changes everything.   


I realized that every manuscript I've ever written has a journey as big part of the story. The current novel is a road trip, racing up and down the Eastern seaboard and then off to Chicago and finally Reno and the Black Rock Dessert.  In Festival Madness, it as the trip to Burning Man.  In Promiscuous Mode, the character traveled to Wisconsin.  In World of Mirrors, the trip was to East Germany.  In the Shadow Warriors the characters congregated at a German university after bogeying through Singapore and Hong Kong.  

I just returned from San Francisco.  Who said every novel is either a journey or a quest?  Or both.  Think of On the Road.  Think of Canterbury Tales. 


An editor said the most boring beginning is to find the character setting out on a journey.  I dunno.  Sounds good to me. 


Marcel went to Balbec and to Venice.  And to visit Aunt Leonie.  I think Proust was a homebody, especially in his later years.  Finally he locked himself into his lonely room and wrote.   That is what I need to do to finish this book.  Why does it take so long? 


The Other Odette

The Proust Interview

Every month Vanity Fair asks a celebrity a series of questions known as the Proust Interview.  The questions are general and can be answered (perhaps differently) at various stages of life.  Here is a link:  to the web site


Imagine my surprise during Bouchercon, the mega-mystery writing and fan convention recently in San Francisco, when best-seller Lee Child was asked questions from the Proust Questionnaire during an interview.  His answers were flip and irreverent and it is galling that I can't find anything relating to the SUBSTANCE of the interview on the web.  There are a gazillion posts about Bouchercon and Lee Child, who threw a Reacher Creature Party on Friday.  But zilch, nada, nothing about the interview.  Rats!  


I was too jet-lagged and wine-soaked to go to the party.  In fact the entire convention passed in a kind of blur.  But San Francisco is a lovely town and we strafed through the City Lights Bookstore, a clean, well-lighted place that Proust would have loved.  We also attended a San Francisco noir event, at which I was even more jet-lagged.  I need to think seriously about arriving en site one day earlier than planned to catch up on sleep.  Eschew wine.  Take brisk walks.  Whatever. 

The most fruitful day was the first where Elizabeth Lyons gave a writing/editing session, and I learned so much.  I was also taking an online class on writing The First Five Pages of the novel.  And we had company and had to do a major house cleaning and other stuff and now I wonder how I stayed awake at all.  

We arrived during the week of San Francisco's "summer," of  beautiful sunny weather.  Stayed not at the convention hotel but at Land's End, on the other side of town, a long but cheap bus ride down Geary Street.  The Seal Rock Inn is situated at a scenic point and has the fame of Hunter Thompson having written one of his book's there.  We like it because of the location, the fact that you get a large suite with a fridge, and free Wi-Fi.  And the bus.  And the restaurant that serves big breakfasts reasonably.  And the funk.  The Grand Hotel at Balbec, it ain't. 


I am reading Proust again, and the Verdurin's party is almost as long as the Guermantes, but more interesting with Cottard, Charlus, the Verdurins, the couple you love to hate, and a cast of many.  Proust is a big change from Janet Evanovich and Jacqueline Winspear, two writers I read on my Kindle during the long flights.  A Kindle is wonderful to load up a bunch of books to go.  No heavy piles of paper, just the little device with it's recharging cord, of course.  


If I ever find out more about Lee Child's answers to the Proust questionnaire, I'll  post.  In the meantime, I'm still catching up on my sleep.

Proust's Overcoat

I have been at a writing conference in San Francisco and was able to pay a visit to the City Lights Bookstore, a place I have craved to see since I was a freshman in college and was introduced to the poetry of Ferlinghetti and some of the "Beat" writers.  I even became a lifetime member of a short-lived coffee house called "The Outside."  


City Lights lived up to my expectations--how often does THAT happen?  My significant other, my son and I all bought books.  Guess what one of my selections was?  Proust's Overcoat.  Written by Italian journalist and writer Lorenza Foschini and translated by Eric Karpeles of Paintings In Proust authorship,


I read Proust's Overcoat on the long flight home, and found it enchanting.  It is the story of one man's obsession with Proust and his effort to salvage Proust's writing and possessions after his death.    Obsession can be a good thing.   


Some nights I do read a few pages of Cities of the Plain and am enjoying it.  The Verdurin's dinner parties are somehow livelier than the Guermantes, don't you think?  And the little band of girls continues to  intrigue us as the narrator spends another summer at Balbec. 


Do pick up a copy of Proust's Overcoat.  Unlike his masterpiece, this book is 128 pages, some of them photos.  You won't still be reading it six months from now.  Hmmm.  Is that a good thing or a bad thing? 


Odette

Back to Balbec

Reading Proust again!  We are in The Cities of the Plain, and the narrator and Albertine are hanging out at the seashore, at first before the high season, and now during  high season.  The Verdurins have rented a house along the coast with a fab view of the ocean.  A train is taking "The Little Clan" to the Verdurin's Wednesday dinner party.  


I have to confess in all my Proust readings I do not recall the Verdurins renting a summer house in the Balbec neighborhood.  I'm really enjoying this part of the book, now that YET ANOTHER endless reception has come and gone. The Guermantes have become bores.  I'm sure the Verdurin's party will be much more interesting.  Mme. Verdurin is a real piece of work, a wonderful character, which is to say a character that is not very nice.  The milk of human kindness does not run in her veins.  I am hoping for some conflict and some fireworks and maybe someone will be expelled from The Little Clan.  


It was a long slow slog through The Guermante's Way to this point.  Albertine flirted like crazy with St. Loup.  I couldn't have liked it more.


The Other Odette, licking her chops at the thought of scandal, disgrace and some more hanky-panky.

Romancing the Past

Does back to school make you nostalgic?  Proust readers may identify with this columnist's take on nostalgia and the past.

Romancing the Past