No, alas, we aren't traveling to Balbec or wherever. Actually, I always wanted to go to Deauville, and now of course, on to San Sebastian in Spain and the Gehry Guggenheim.
Instead, we are in "staycation" mode, visiting Plymouth and the Plantation and the Mayflower, and the Museum of Science in Boston, making day trips. Blue Man Group is also on the agenda. What do you think Proust would say about Blue Man Group.? Sure ain't the Vinteiul Sontata in Mme. Verdurin's drawing room.
No young girls in flower, although the waitresses at the Plymouth seafood restaurant Cabbyshack were in the same mold, if you move ahead 90 years. Pretty and smiling and athletic-looking. I could see them on their bicycles cycling along the shore.
I tried YET AGAIN to get through the last pages of the Guermantes Way and fell asleep after two pages. This is ridiculous. I'll have to spend an afternoon and not rely on bedtime reading.
Of course Nantucket is a Proustian place, and although it has changed from the ramshackle town I first visited when I was younger, (eeek!), the sunlight and the smell of the hedges and the walk to the beach, even Main Street still hold their familiar sights and patterns. The hedge fund managers and the glitz are welcome to go away, but keep the perfumed hedges. A little seediness is sometimes a good thing. Galveston was always best when it was seedy.
Does anyone take Proust for a beach read? I wouldn't think so. Let me know if YOU do this.
Today is Thisbe's birthday. She has a new mouse and an extra ration of catnip. Wish her nine more years of the wonderful life of a cat in this cat-catering household.
The other Odette
Showing posts with label finishing Proust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label finishing Proust. Show all posts
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Onscreen Scientist Summarizes Proust
Finally a most worthy post apropos Proust from "Onscreen Scientist," who has completed a second reading of Proust in French, and has also completed the work in English.
My hat is off to him, for several reasons. He is a physicist and a software writer. In another lifetime, I wrote software for a living, and with a few exceptions, this was not a literary crowd. I cannot think of any of my software colleagues who would have read Proust and my conjecture is that few of them would have even known who he was. Perhaps the scientist writes AI software or something besides grinding out business transactions ad nauseum ad infinitum.
I have known a few literary physics majors, most of the professors. I think physics teaches a certain curiosity about the world--well all science should do that except maybe creationism, which is of course not science but pseudo-science like astrology and phrenology and Madame Sostirus, cardreader and fortuneteller. I know people who actually believe this stuff.
But back to Proust. Onscreen Scientist offers a great summation of the book--a bit longer than those in the All England Summarize Proust Contest, and I think he is dead on about Albertine. One just cannot ever quite get a handle on her. She remains, for me, too, a tabula rasa.
Currently, I am wallowing in Mme. Villeparisis' endless party, and in two days I leave for Northern Nevada, a wonderful place for reading Proust but I only travel there with softcovers I can leave behind, and of course, that would not be Proust.
So click ye forth and read Onscreen Scientist's Proust post, and then hie ye to Proust himself, the great one. I was an the New England Independent Booksellers Association Trade Show yesterday and scooped up a wonderful bunch of books.
When people say they don't read, I feel an awful sympathy. How could you not read?
After all, Onscreen Scientists reads the master in French. Zowie!
http://onscreen-scientist.com/?p=35
Odette, the other one
My hat is off to him, for several reasons. He is a physicist and a software writer. In another lifetime, I wrote software for a living, and with a few exceptions, this was not a literary crowd. I cannot think of any of my software colleagues who would have read Proust and my conjecture is that few of them would have even known who he was. Perhaps the scientist writes AI software or something besides grinding out business transactions ad nauseum ad infinitum.
I have known a few literary physics majors, most of the professors. I think physics teaches a certain curiosity about the world--well all science should do that except maybe creationism, which is of course not science but pseudo-science like astrology and phrenology and Madame Sostirus, cardreader and fortuneteller. I know people who actually believe this stuff.
But back to Proust. Onscreen Scientist offers a great summation of the book--a bit longer than those in the All England Summarize Proust Contest, and I think he is dead on about Albertine. One just cannot ever quite get a handle on her. She remains, for me, too, a tabula rasa.
Currently, I am wallowing in Mme. Villeparisis' endless party, and in two days I leave for Northern Nevada, a wonderful place for reading Proust but I only travel there with softcovers I can leave behind, and of course, that would not be Proust.
So click ye forth and read Onscreen Scientist's Proust post, and then hie ye to Proust himself, the great one. I was an the New England Independent Booksellers Association Trade Show yesterday and scooped up a wonderful bunch of books.
When people say they don't read, I feel an awful sympathy. How could you not read?
After all, Onscreen Scientists reads the master in French. Zowie!
http://onscreen-scientist.com/?p=35
Odette, the other one
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
After the Ball is Over
A blogger has just finished Proust's masterpiece.
http://ofbooksandbikes.wordpress.com/
Last night, wired by some coffee, I read more pages than usual. Dinner, still at Rivebelle, and descriptions of the dining room, the funnel-shaped tea room, the guests, and the narrator in love with. . . what? Love. Hard to say. The late sunlight filtering in. We have that in our dining room at home, too, and it blinds you. Good sunsets, sometimes in the trees beyond the slough. In France, the sun would set over the ocean. Good clouds would produce a prime spectacle.
Yowza!
http://ofbooksandbikes.wordpress.com/
Last night, wired by some coffee, I read more pages than usual. Dinner, still at Rivebelle, and descriptions of the dining room, the funnel-shaped tea room, the guests, and the narrator in love with. . . what? Love. Hard to say. The late sunlight filtering in. We have that in our dining room at home, too, and it blinds you. Good sunsets, sometimes in the trees beyond the slough. In France, the sun would set over the ocean. Good clouds would produce a prime spectacle.
Yowza!
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