Reading Proust in Paris

This blog is worth its weight in madelines if for no other reason that it helps me find interesting writing, people, other blogs, and one thing always leads to another. Serendipity, that' s what it is.

Here is a blogger reading Proust in Paris and even trying to write like Proust, a challenging experiment.

I would need a long piece of cord or string to find my way back to the subject of my sentence. How many parenthetical phrases can one string together? I noticed Proust's dialogue is stuck in the middle of the paragraph with no quote marks or any of those little grammatical tags that help the reader. You're on your own with Proust.

Read on down into the blog to find some fascinating discussions of writing, and also several beginnings of what has to become a wonderful novel. Yowza!

http://literarylab.blogspot.com/2009/09/lexperience.html

Sometimes it seems that all the bookstores are closing. In New York City there will be one less place to purchase Proust in the original French. So sad.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/longlived-french-bookstore-in-rockefeller-center-to-close/

Serendity

My old, long down web site was called "Serendipity," probably because as I surfed the web, I found many serendiptious things. Today, browsing through my "favorite" blogs, none of which I read daily, I found this interesting exchange of letters with a big mention of Proust, so go ye forth and click:

http://raymondfederman.blogspot.com/2007/12/conversation-with-miloi.html

Interesting comments about diaries and journals. I have not kept a dairy since 4th grade, and have always envied fellow writers who keep journals. Sometimes, but not often, I keep a travel journal, if the destination is particularly fascinating.