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. 

Catching Up On Proust

Whew!  Busy writing, cooking, gardening, doing the holidays, and racing around in general.  I have neglected Reading Proust in Foxborough, but here is a catch up post, because all the interesting Proust "stuff" that's come into my mailbox has been saved.  

Here are some cool links, in no particular order.  Read on. 

From November 11th.   Who was the woman who made Proust swoon?  Who was the model for the Duchess of Guermantes?

 France Marvels At a Class of Woman Who Made Proust Swoon

From November 19th:  The Albertine Workout.  What is heaven's name is that?  Read on and all shall be revealed.  Not what you think.  No weightlifting or wind sprints.  Some mental exercise involved.  Hey, it's Proust!

Enigmatic writer Anne Carson shares ‘The Albertine Workout’

Anne Carson Reads the Albertine Workout  

Proust: The Search by Benjamin Taylor review – scintillating narrative 

Swooning, scintillating, enigmatic:  we are definitely in Proust territory here. 

A new Proust biography from Yale University Press. 

 Searching for Proust and also lost time 

The Search: A Review 

 Are you exhausted yet?  Read on. 

December 10th, 2015  Proust Forum in Boca

My New York friends who spend part of the winter in Florida are always dismissive of its culture.  You probably were not in Boca Raton on Dec. 10th, but if you were, you, alas, missed an insightful lecture on Swann's Way.   Read on.  Proust and Swann's Way Discussed at Boca Forum 

Lastly, not strictly Proust, but tangential to Proust and I found it interesting to see Proust influencing the third world and you might also. 

January 11, 2016  Delhi, India

The popular writer-blogger talks about Delhi, Marcel Proust, and his days as a hotel waiter. 

 Mayank Austen Soofi is an interesting man.

 

 

 

Proust and Euphemisms

The blogger in the link below takes exception to one of Proust's "euphemisms," but I really liked it because Proust  didn't use whatever the  current euphemism was (and there were probably many).  Instead Proust used something very specific to Swann and Odette, something with meaning to them, and I thought that was an example of his greatness as a writer. 
Has anyone noticed, by the way, that "hiking the Appalachian Trail" has become a NEW euphemism, and that in our times, these new expressions come facing at us before the ink is dry. 


Here is the blog link: 


http://readingwithmytwin.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/euphemisms-101/


A cattleya is an orchid, (shown above, and look at Google images if you want to see hundreds), and Odette always wore one on her decolletage. 


The other Odette, who doesn't wear flowers but likes to grow them. 

Blogging Proust blogging Proust

Proust and the Self:

An essay about re-reading Proust some years later. I can relate to this, but not quite as literarily. Too long in Foxborough?

http://onlywordstoplaywith.blogspot.com/2008/06/proust-and-self.html

Proust is no Hemingway.

Mais non! Proust is Proust and Papa is Papa. They are as different as say, Proust and Kerouac, who really do have much in common. Hmmmm. This is actually another readable essay by someone who has tried Proust and failed, and is back again to scale the summit. Looks like he may succeed this time. God knows, I tried Moby Dick several times before succeeding, and War and Peace endless times. Then I picked it up and read it from cover to cover. Sometimes the reader is not ready for a work of literature, but this is not failure.

http://literarysummits.com/index.php/2008/06/29/moving-on-to-swanns-way/

Madame Proust

Some Proust blogs/articles/etc. of interest today. I wonder if the Hawthorne's are blooming. Always wanted to try to grow them, but I never did.

Some notes on Proust's family life

http://thelawsofnightandhoney.blogspot.com/2008/04/prousts-mom.html

And a review of the excellent bio, Madame Proust.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n09/lade01_.html

Odette who has been ultra-busy this month with this and that.

It Was The Year Everyone Was Reading and Blogging Proust

Another Proust reader and blogger:
http://gaiawriter.blogspot.com/2007/11/on-marcel-proust.html

And yet another:
http://booksinnorthport.blogspot.com/2007/11/when-to-hold-em-when-to-fold-em.html

This reader liked the first and last volumes, Swann's Way and The Past Recaptured. Have to admit these are my faves, too. But one has to merit The Past Recaptured, which is won, so to speak, by reading the whole WORK.

The blogger above, booksinnorthport, has an interesting post. When does one actually abandon a book? When I was younger, I would pursue the book to the bloody end, no matter what. This is how I actually got through Moby Dick and others classics. It was how I got through Proust the first time as an undergraduate, that and the fact that I was writing a senior thesis on a group of writers of whom Proust was one.

I had a bunch of false starts with War and Peace and then one Christmas vacation I read it from cover to cover in about a week. Wanted to weep at the end. No, not from relief, but from the final passages about history.

I am having trouble getting through Three Trapped Tigers, but I will. Works of so-called popular fiction, i.e. genre writing, I abandon after 50 pages if it doesn't grab me. Have a whole shelf of those. Some of the authors are famous.

A book I read recently that I would heartily recommend if The Poisonwood Bible. Just knocked my socks off. Kingsolver gets better and better, and I would love to read her latest non-fiction about growing your own food.

Now I have to make a mad dash through my own latest oeuvre, before sending it off to a publisher who will maybe even like it. One gets so close to one's writing that the perspective just disappears.

In the meantime, I am enjoying the narrator and Albertine and the little band at Balbec. With winter approaching, Balbec seems desireable, non? The sun, the sand, the dining room, the snobs, the parading up and down. Does Balbec have a Strand Promenade? I feel I know these people. That's what a great writer does.

Odette

Duchesse of Guermantes Speaks

http://mleddy.blogspot.com/2007/07/proust-duchesse-of-guermantes-speaks.html

Orange Crate Art blogs Proust, too. Still seems like everyone is blogging Proust, even those who admit to never having read him, or pooping out halfway through Swann's Way. That would not, of course, be Orange Crate Art.

Do oranges still come in the kind of crates of yore? I had an orange crate in my room as a kid. Kind of a doll house/nightstand affair. I thought it was cool. Of course I also wore pajamas made out of chicken feed sacks. Chicken feed came in nice muslin prints and in those days items like orange crates and fabric were always recycled. There were no McMansions, and the town banker lived in a house just a little better than everyone else. A new car was the big thing.

The character Bloch has appeared at Balbec. In college, I had a friend very much like Bloch. Life imitating art? His name was Dennis. Bloch is very funny when he accuses he narrator of sucking up to the snobs and aristos. Isn't the Duchesse of piece of work? The thing is, I have heard people talk like that and not very long ago. In the particular is the universal.

Onward,

Grapeshot