"In Search of Lost Time", anyone?

[catbert836]

I just completed Volume One of Proust's masterpiece, "Swann's Way", and am planning on reading the whole seven volumes. It's honestly some of the most beautiful prose that I've ever read, and Proust has a tendency every 30 pages or so to say something so incredibly profound that it just makes me stop reading and marvel.

So, have any others of the most intelligent group of people I know read this massive (and massively worth reading) book?

[flyingfysh]

1. keep reading!

For all its size, the whole book has the most incredible ending I have ever seen in literature. You get the feeling that Proust couldn't have changed anything along the way.

I would call this the *best* novel I have ever read, and that's saying a lot. I've read all the standard heavyweights (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Melville, etc).

[bemildred]

2. Finished the 3rd volumne of the Moncrieff-Kilmartin translation last year.

A very long read. Like going through Gibbon. But I agree, although tedious in spots, when he goes on for 50 pages with this involved sort of introspection about his sexual neuroses, his prose is always good, sometimes genius, and he pops out with these 50-100 page sections of riveting dialog and observation every so often.

[GymDude]

3. Do it!

I finished the whole thing last year. Many years ago, I had read the first volume in the original French (!). Decades later, I started from the beginning again, in English, and finished it all.

It's definitely worth the effort. It does drag a bit around volume 3 or so, but even the "slow" parts run rings around most other fiction.

I must admit, though, that "Swann's Way" is the best volume of the work, but some of the others come close. It will become part of your life.

Vol. VI of the Modern Library Clssics editon includes, at the end, a great guide to Proust: an index of all the themes, places, real people, and, especially, characters. It's facinating to see how the characters pop up from volume to volume.