Time Regained

Here is a review of the Proust movie, Time Regained.   I actually saw this movie a few years ago in Harvard Square and thought that they did an excellent job considering how notoriously difficult filming Proust's work must be.

Read on.

http://moviesuntildeath.blogspot.com/2010/01/time-regained-1999.html

Odette

The Cork-Lined Room

I really like The Cork-Lined Room.  The discussion of Proust is excellent with its use of quotes and detail and yet is something every reader can follow--in other words its not too "academic." 


Small confession:  I used to be in the academic camp and somehow migrated to genre fiction where I'm not really at home either.  A wanderer in the city of narrative.



The link to the post with wonderful reflections on Mme. Verdurin, Odette and Marcel is below:


http://thecorklinedroom.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/it-was-a-recognised-joke-in-the-little-clan-among-those-who-were-not-over-endowed-with-wit-to-pretend-that-they-could-never-grow-used-to-saying-mme-swann/


What a cursor-full! 


I always like to see how an author handles flowers.  


Odette, the other one

Resolved: Finish the second volume

"Odette" contemplating a New Year's resolution

In the course of things, I don't generally do New Year's Resolutions.  Stopped smoking years ago after several NYR's had failed me.  I did lose 5 pounds last year and kept it off.  And this year I want to finish Proust again.  If I can just get by those damned dull parties.  So onward.


I've been learning a new computer.  Switched from PC to MAC and right now I'm picking up email three different places, and one place just refuses to "Keep as New."  After a day it's gone.  So I've lost a couple of good Proust messages from Google that didn't hang around very long.  Two are linked to this site.


But today I found a  true gem.  Now let's not laugh too hard.  We were all young once, and some of us still are, but not your saintly Odette.  Of a certain age, don't ya know? 


So here in the link below, a young lady has resolved to read Proust, the great existentialist!   
http://www.semissourian.com/story/1598917.html


Now the question is:  when will she realize that Proust and Sarte don't have a lot in common.  Or do they?  Doctoral thesis anyone?

Proust as sleeping potion

It's a sad commentary when one reads a single page of Proust and falls asleep.   Of course, it was late and I am pretty tired these days from the holiday tasks along with the household tasks, getting regular exercise, writing, editing, more writing, volunteer work for writing orgs, and keeping up with all the newspapers and magazines.  It's a full life.  And oftimes, a tiring one.  Hence, dropping off on poor Proust.  Still at one of the endless receptions.  This time the narrator is afraid that he wasn't REALLY invited.  Silly boy.

References to hidden homosexuality.  Man, were those guys (and girls) ever in the closet.  With the door barred, the lights out, and hiding behind the shoes.  Must have been very stressful.  I was in college before I knew there was such a thing as a lesbian.

So we're off to do a little last minute shopping, totally unlike moi to wait for the ultimate minute.   The older you get, the less clothing, shoes, new furniture, STUFF, you need.  You need more time and a bit of a nap every day.  Hence, Proust. 

My bad!

Odette

On Safari and Other Adventures in Blogging

This blog doesn't like my new MAC and it sure doesn't like Safari.  A day wasted in computer hell, and the formatting really stunk.  My most was totally hosed, first with Technorati going crazy and now with the links, etc.  Way too much time debugging stuff, when I could have been reading Proust or even contemplating my navel.  Now to see what this post looks like.

Odette who doesn't want to be a geek or a guru.

Thankful for Proust and Proust Bloggers

Bookishness continues his Proust blog. Sue Grafton advises writers to pay attention to minor characters, as Proust does in spades.

http://charlesmatthews.blogspot.com/2009/11/proust-project-day-5.html

Th Cork-lined Room also keeps Proust blogging on a high level:

http://thecorklinedroom.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/the-desires-that-had-surrounded-me-a-short-time-ago-to-go-to-guermantes-to-travel-to-be-happy-were-so-far-behind-me-now-that-their-fulfillment-would-not-have-brought-me-any-pleasure/

Moi? I'm organizing for Thanksgiving. Need a Francoise of my own. And one of these days, a cork-lined room.

The Other Odette

Ten pages a day

Actually, ten pages per day of Proust is a fairly ambitious goal, unless one has scads of leisure, and who has that.

I haven't read anything for the past ten or so days. Life intrudes. Lately, while sipping a late afternoon glass of wine, I fall asleep in front of the food channel. When I wake up, I don't know where I am (the living room). How can this be?

Read this: http://charlesmatthews.blogspot.com/2009/11/proust-project.html

The Guermantes Way

Someone else is slogging through the receptions and dinner parties. Doesn't seem to mind.

http://www.litkicks.com/ProustIII/

I'm getting into the next volume, but not in any serious way. Oh for the days when I could sit down and read War and Peace from cover to cover over the holidays. Why has that become so impossible.

Dunno. Onward.

Dissing Proust in Foxborough

This blog presents all opinions, even the anti-Proust.

By the way, I read some more of "Sodom" the other night, and holey-shamoley, there's another Guermantes reception as an alert reader had warned. Although this one with homo-erotic overtones is more interesting than those that went before.

Here is Gemaine Greer in wrath and finery:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/nov/08/germaine-greer-proust

The other Odette

New Proust Blogger

Here is a link to a new Proust blogger. Do we read Proust for fun? Why not? Fun is where you find it, but not usually in 300+ word sentences.

Proust is fun, when the humor or quirky observations strike, and the feeling, such as when the Grandmother dies, is also compelling. Not so, the endless receptions and dinner parties. Maybe they are so long to make them boring like in real life.

When I was a very young bride, my husband's office manager threw exceedingly boring Christmas parties, and we always went, and I tried to find creative reasons to cut out early. The guests were all stodgy middle-aged types and I was 22 for cryin' out loud. We were always told that after we left, "things really got going." I don't think so. Maybe Proust's parties are so long to convey the tediousness and the boredom.

SHOW, DON'T TELL. I get it!

Here is the link: http://readproust.blogspot.com/

The Wrong Neurons are crossing the synapses

Everytime I set my fingers to the keyboard this week I do something stupid. I continue to spell Orhan Pamuk's name every which way but right. I tweeted about the wrong guest of honor (Evanovich, not Grafton) at the New England Crimebake, and I answer emails to the wrong people. Is there a screw-up pollen floating about?

Maybe I should just lay off for a few weeks until all the big stuff has come and gone? What fun would that be? But I wouldn't have to make these continual corrections and apologies, mea culpa-ing right and left. So uncool.

I doubt if Proust had these problems, but then he died younger than I am, and I seem to having Senior Days of late. Acting in haste, repenting in haste. No fun in that.

Sorry Sue. Sorry Orhan. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Yes, and I've burnt the pot again that it took 3 days to scour. A bit of inattention to the pears in port wine. The sauce carmelized and burnt before my very eyes, while I stirred the saurkraut. Kind of a yin and yang dinner with Kielbasa and kraut followed by pears poached in port wine. We're that kind of household.

Forever,

Odette

The Museum of Innocence

Complimenting Orhan Pamuk's appearance at the Boston Festival of Books is this upcoming review (mentioning Panuk's close reading of Proust and Proust's influence on Pamuk) from The New York Review of Books.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23381

It would be interesting to write a paper about Proust and Pamuk, but I will leave that to a more scholarly person. Perhaps someone has already.

Wondering,

Odette

Why is Everybody Reading Proust?

Well, Proust gets a lot of free PR. Proust and the Squid, How Proust Can Change Your Life--Proust's name in the title of a book is not uncommon.

How many undergraduates read Proust these days? That's when/where I learned about the Narrator. My god, I read parts of Jean Santeuil and all sorts of references. Poulet's Studies in Human Time and ??? I wish I still had the list. Wish I still had my paper. Hmmm. Maybe one more trek through the folders of olde college stuffe.

I doubt that anyone in my writing group has read Proust. Suspect a couple of them may not have even heard of him. But of course, unless you are writing long, long sentences, Proust isn't required for writers. These days, those sentences would be out of favor.

Saturday evening at the Boston Festival of Books, I listened to Orhan Pamuk's address, and tried to think when, except for Proust, I read anything the least bit "literary." Couldn't think of anything going back to The Corrections. That novel, while excellent, did not read as "literary"--think big words and long sentences.

Pamuk, whom I have not read, seemed literary. Maybe literariness is a European thing. Literary Americans? Faulkner was literary. Thomas Wolfe. My mind has gone blank. Who else? Ah, Henry James. Definitely James. The Golden Bowl. Very literary. Is literary a function of writing structure or of subject matter. What makes literary?

Proust is definitely "literary." Here is a link again to a new Proust reading group.

http://thecorklinedroom.wordpress.com/

And here's a link to an opinion about the cork-lined room. I notice the author does not have this blog in his sights. Oh well, no matter.

http://pykk.blogspot.com/2009/10/possessor-possesses-nothing.html

When I climb out from under 2009, I'll read Proust again. Practically salivating. Can't wait to get to the last book, The Past Recaptured, the reward for all that hard reading.

Onward

The Cork-Lined Room

A cork-lined room would be a good thing. For the past week, we've had very somnolent yellow jackets(wasps) buzzing around the ceiling and other lights in our home office. They expired before they could sting anyone. Since the pests seemed to be increasing, we became concerned. An inspection of the exterior of the house revealed wasps coming and going thru the hole where the air conditioning enters the basement.

A call to the condo association brought the extermination 24 hours later. Ye Gods! The yellow jackets had a nest in the furnace room, an inaccessible nest, their own cork-lined room, and were coming into the office because that door is frequently ajar as the cats like to hang out in the furnace room when they need a bit of private time.

So now the room is sealed up until the fumes abate and the wasps are dead. Cats were banned from the office last night which they didn't like. Thisbe was horrified when the "workmen" appeared. She was just relaxing because the houseguests had finally departed. A cat likes her solitude, her own cork-lined room.

I congratulate myself for figuring out the riddle of the wasps, and that we got such fast action. We'll have to block the hole, of course. Always something.

Speaking of cork-lined rooms, a new Proust reading group has started.

http://thesecondpass.com/?p=3185

Check it out.

The Other Odette