Reading Proust in Foxborough in Not A Lit Blog

Don't you just love it when tempests rise within the teacup? I have to confess that I do. Below are links to some interviews and anti-anti-blog remarks (you may need a scorecard). Makes me wonder if I have a "right" to discuss Proust, since I've been in Information Technology instead of Literature for lo, these many years.

http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2007/05/conversation-with-sheila-kohler-on-book.html

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/web_tech/author_slams_blogs_publicist_sighs_quietly_59505.asp

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/lit_crit/old_man_look_at_my_blog_schickel_mouths_off_about_blogs_to_larger_audience_59411.asp


At Book Expo, the Luddites are trembling in their Gucci Loafers again at the idea of free books to download, e-publishing, and all those dastardly things. Many readers, writers and especially publishers are anti-computer. Publishing is a hide-bound business, even if they do count beans a lot nowadays. Meanwhile Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are interviewed together. How cool is that?

Sometimes the Luddites makes me want to slink and skulk and hide in the shrubbery of the Bois de Boulogne. Maybe Mme. Swann will have an assignation or two that I can report on.

Still reading about Marcel and Gilberte and he is sounding an awful lot like Swann in love. Bring on Albertine and the jeunes filles. Were they really jeune filles? Do I have a right to ask?

Onward,

Odette

Fantastic Proust Insight

I'm currently reading about Marcel & Gilberte and this blogger has (pardon le cliche) hit the nail on the head. Excellent observations.

http://shutupproust.blogspot.com/2007/06/isygf-chapter-8-bonjour-mrs-robinson.html

Why haven't we seen more of shutupproust before? Check it out.

Odette (the other one)

Adieu, Marcelle

http://marcellepwrites.blogspot.com/2007/05/ctait-autre-chose-que-javais-crire.html

Marcelle is leaving the blogosphere, at least temporarily. One less is the grand armee writing about the narrator.

Alas!

Cold Beef, Spiced with Carrots en Gelee

It's been a long famine in Proust with dinner party after dinner party and no mention of food. Then Swann didn't get invited to dinner anymore, and there was really a dearth of food.

Finally, in Within a Budding Grove (Madame Swann at Home), the narrator's family is entertaining M. de Norpois and Francois has made a fantastic meal.
"The cold beef, spieced with carrots, made its appearance, couched by the Michelangelo of our kitchen upon enormous crystals of jelly, like transparent blocks of quartz."

How's that for an image? Later comes a pineapple and truffle salad which doesn't sound too appetizing to me. Did something get lost in translation? M. de Norpois did not appear to be enthusiastic either.

Later, the narrator ate lobster Americaine and chocolate cake at the Swann's table.

Interesting that Odette (the other one) used numerous English words and phrases. Christmas, not Noel, and any number of expressions. Must have been the big fad then. Something I missed on the first readings.

The social climbing and gossip begin to grate on one, at least on this one. Such snobbery. No one is blameless.

Toujours,

Odette

Memorial Day

If I was fortunate enough to be in Paris this weekend, I'd visit Pere Lachaise and Proust's grave. Instead, in Foxborough, we visit all the old "burying grounds." The grave of any soldier, from the Revolutionary war to the present, has a fresh American flag on it. Very touching, in the old, old graveyards.

Here are the links to some recent Proust blogs of note. I am still amazed how we are all reading Proust together.

http://litkitten.blogspot.com/2007/05/turning-on-tuning-in-to-proust.html

http://dr-nuk.livejournal.com/94797.html

http://www.themillionsblog.com/2007/05/margaret-thatcher-humanist-icon.html

http://mleddy.blogspot.com/2007/05/proust-and-cather.html

http://frogsmoke.com/

Swann's Way-- the End

Somehow I thought Swann's Way ended with Swann out of love, but it ends with the narrator contemplating the Bois de Boulogne, irretrievably changed as is Marcel. They take a huge leap forward in time.

"The reality that I had known no longer existed." Must be the shortest sentence in Proust.

Two wonderful bird images in the last pages. ". . . while we began our game upon the lawn, scattering the pigeons, whose beautiful, iridescent bodies (shaped like hearts and, surely the lilacs of the feathered kingdom) took refuge as in so many sanctuaries, one on the great basin of sone, on which its beak, as it disappeared below the rim, conferred the part, assigned the purpose of offering to the bird in abundance the fruit or grain at which it appeared to be pecking, another on the head of the statue, which it seemed to crown with of those works the monotony of the stone. . ."

In an earlier passage he remarks, "Presently, one after another, like shyly hopping sparrows, her friends arrived, black against the snow."

Shyly hopping sparrows. Two great bird images.

Now onto Within A Budding Grove.

A Demain.

Odette

Marcel is not Proust

Another blog with some thoughtful commentary. I finally finished Swann's Way, which ended, shall we say, modestly. Kind of peters out with Swann no longer in love with Odette, or so he thinks. Well, we don't need a big bang-up ending with explosions and emoting .

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10968

I must confess I liked the scenes set at Combray better than Swann's endless mooning about Odette. All he would have needed to do was cut the money off and she would have been back at the speed of light. Which he knew. One wanted to give him a couple of slaps alongside the head. His friends were sending anonymous letters detailing her transgressions. The scenes where he questioned her and she confessed to various misdeeds were good. He was such a bloody fool. Love is blind.

Onward to Albertine and Gilberte, and the very naughty Charlus.

Proust and Kerouac

Proust and Kerouac? Marcel and Jack? Now that's an unholy combination. Think about it.

http://litkitten.blogspot.com/2007/05/thoughts-for-thursday-jack-and-marcel.html

More Proust bloggers brought to you by

Odette

Proust and Impressionism

Impressionist paintings always make me think of Proust, and I saw a whole gallery of Monets this weekend, as well as some at MOMA in NYC. Toulouse Lautrec brings up images of Proust as well. One can almost hear the little phrase of Vinteiul echoing around the gilt frames. The writing seems impressionistic, too, don't you think? Certainly the realism of, say, Zola is absent. As a writer, I'm interested in what doesn't say, as well as what he does. The choice of details is, of course, crucial.

I'm almost finished reading about Swann and Odette. Onward to Les Jeunes Filles.

Sometimes, it seems like the whole world is reading and blogging Proust these days. I think it's a movement. Who would have thought?

http://mleddy.blogspot.com/2007/05/proust-now-who-can-that-be.html

Odette

Marcel Marcel

Today's blog find:

http://marimann.wordpress.com/2007/05/16/in-search-of-marcel/

I'm going to NYC for an alumni college on Saturday and some R & R. Not Venice or Marcel's seaside holiday, but with its own enchantments. A visit to MOMA, my first, is in the cards.

Rain predicted, and a cool front has moved into the Northeast. Good for the garden. No hawthornes in sight, but I have an orange rhododendrum ready to bloom. Just planted two years ago and it has 13 big flower buds this year. I may swoon. White asparagus season is here and I recall how young Marcel went on and on about the delicate coloration. Proust hovers over everything.

Odette

Is there enough time to search for lost time?

Ah, that is the question. Reading Proust seems to be on everyone's list and there is a now or never sense of getting through the whole novel. Not an easy task. I'm glad I've done it once, and practically twice and here we go on thrice. So I'm not really desperate. Yet.

http://darkorpheus.blogspot.com/2007/05/why-read-proust.html

I've happened upon some really cool blogs since I started my Google Journal through mentions of Proust. Who knew? There's a whole world of Proust and people reading him in the blogosphere. When I began, I felt that I was reading in the wilderness, as Foxborough seemed, but now I realize that we Proust readers are legion. I wonder, if fact, if there is a Proust revival. Methinks he never needed one. Yet, I wonder if I know anyone at all except myself who has actually read him. Maybe a friend who majored in French. I'll ask her.

We have no hawthornes abloom, but we have a great color explosion in New England right now, and one wants to walk the Guermantes Way. Wonder if their famous wit is anywhere evident. :)

Odette

Blogging about blogging Proust

Here is a blog with more information on the Proust questionnaire that is making the rounds of the blogosphere and the web.

http://www.bloggingauthors.com/2007/05/11/stepping-inside-the-mind-of-marcel-proust-an-inquiry/

Currently, I seem to be blogging about blogging Proust instead of blogging Proust, if you get the drift, and of course Proust readers and even would-be readers are not intellectual vaccums and will get the drift.

Something that I have noticed lately, very lately in fact. Artists of like minds always form groups or coteries. Nothing new there. Artists (and now I am thinking of Edward Hopper and Modernisme) portray extreme alienation in their work. One thinks the artist must be alienated from society to paint such explicit loneliness, yet the artist has his set of friends and compadres who think as he does and they must have rather jolly unalienated (is there such a word?) times together in the bars and the studios. Som quatre gats. A contradiction? I'm giving this some thought as I am to Swann, who also seems to experience alienation as he goes about his love and social life.

Food for thought. Blueberry waffles for breakfast on this Mother's Day. A special treat. I notice that Proust is very reticent about what is served at the Vinteiul dinner partys. Very focused and interior. Comme il faut.

Odette

Swann's Way: A Quick Read? I don't think so.

I found a blogger who thinks he might finish Swann's Way over a quick vacation?

http://loosebaggymonster.blogspot.com/2007/05/hmmmm-decisions-decisions.html

Maybe a speed reader?

I am still doing the good slog since winter, and ain't through yet. I stop and read other stuff, too.

How about you?

Marcel Proust, Anti-Internet Geek

A fellow blogger has an interesting take on Proust, who never had his hard drive crash on a Sunday evening.

http://unloadmyhead.blogspot.com/2007/05/marcel-prousts-in-search-of-lost-time.html

Odette, who is attempting to put her e-life back together.