The Year of Reading Proust discussion

Proustitute wrote: "I agree with Kalliope and Nick re: the nesting of voices.

I haven't read this yet, but at the very beginning of Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time: A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things ..."

Roger Shattuck wrote Proust's Binoculars dealing with this very subject: the different lenses in the "je"

Indeed, Cassian. Shattuck's books (also his "Proust" with which "Proust's Binoculars" and "Proust's Way" share often verbatim sections) are really enjoyable.

Does anyone know why the narrator refers to his grandfather's sister as 'great aunt' and yet his grandmother's sisters (Céline and Flora) as only his 'aunts'? By definition, his grandmother's sisters should also be great aunts to him. Is there some custom of which I'm not aware?

I think that the healthiest people psychologically are the ones who don't cling to the past and just let their memories flow past them. But that is a 21st century interpretation. The narrator is a product of the 19th century and is sentimental for his own past, and visits it, dream-like in this opening at Combray. Sentimentality was a very common and cherished emotional experience in the 19th century. I think we need to keep that in mind as we read this from the point of view of the 21st century.

Proustitute wrote: "We will meet some very damaged and bizarre characters along the way. Can we perhaps chalk up everyone's supposed "psychoses" to the psychopathology of every day life? .."

We can and should and will. Fiction is fiction is fiction.

Laurie wrote: "I think that the healthiest people psychologically are the ones who don't cling to the past and just let their memories flow past them. But that is a 21st century interpretation. The narrator is a..."

Not only is it a difference of the times, but of the customs of a country. If we diagnose differences as mental illness, there'd be a lot of mentally ill people in this world. Or maybe we're all mad.

Proustitute wrote: "I wonder if "diagnosing" the narrator is prudent? I think we all read with our own experiences and bring our world view to fiction, but perhaps there is a bit too much application of mental illness..."

Funny, I'm thinking there's a lot of Physics in here, too, and this was before all the theories came out.

Proustitute wrote: "I wonder if "diagnosing" the narrator is prudent? ..."

I don't think it's about prudence. To me, prudence describes things like wearing oven gloves when taking something hot out of the oven - if you don't do it, you will be burnt. But there are many, many ways to approach and analyse a text, and psychoanalysis is simply one of them. Personally, I find it a very interesting approach. And literary criticism would be very narrow if everyone took the same approach.

With regard to the concept of diagnosing things that aren't normal as illness or disability, that is exactly what happens in real life, in today's society. Illness and disability are defined as such by society - in Proust's day, I wouldn't have a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. I'd be seen as an oversensitive/difficult/eccentric and maybe neurotic or something to do with my nerves, as that is how hyper-sensitivity seemed to be diagnosed in those times.

Is it really so terrible that Proust and/or his narrator could potentially have a difference that is in modern days defined as a disability/mental illness? This is about social constructs - how society interprets certain behaviour and illnesses constantly changes. For instance, it's been suggested that the 'swoons' in Victorian literature, requiring 'smelling salts' for recovery, could be what today are called panic attacks.

I feel it's important to point out that if Proust and/or his narrator did happen to meet the diagnostic criteria that society has decided upon for, say, autism, or a mental illness, that does not in any way change them or change the novel. It doesn't make them less in any way. It is simply about society, and how societal interpretations of certain behaviours change over time.

Just to add - I don't think anyone 'rushed to diagnose' anyone. I was very tentative in my wonderings whether Proust or his narrator were on the spectrum. I was full of speculations - questions rather than statements. That is how I approach novels - with questions, rather than answers, because my own approach is that I don't think there are definitive answers about how works of literature 'should' be interpreted (although I realise and accept that others may disagree!) :-)

Proust was compared to Einstein at the time. "The NRF finally published Camile Vettard's article "Proust et Einstein" on August 1. Although Proust told Gallimard that Vettard "flatters me too much," the novelist was delighted by the comparison. Vettard had found, among other similarities, that Proust and Einstein "have the sense, the intuition, the comprehension of the great natural laws." {Marcel Proust: A Life by William C. Carter, p 789}

Mainly due to the relativistic aspects of his novel, I imagine. I suppose at that time, fictional representations of relativity (character shifting, viewpoint changing, non-priviliged observers) were as novel as physical theories of the same. There is an old joke, "A student riding in a train looks up and sees Einstein sitting next to him. Excited he asks, "Excuse me, professor. Does Boston stop at this train?" This must have been a very novel thing to think about at the time and very much at odds with the certifiably stolid (and solid), perceivable, familiar world of the time.

Anyway,

Interesting point Jason about the aunt/great aunt thing. I have always wondered the same, frankly. Perhaps it is a writerly device to help us not get confused between 3 great aunts!

Nick wrote: "Anyway,

Interesting point Jason about the aunt/great aunt thing. I have always wondered the same, frankly. Perhaps it is a writerly device to help us not get confused between 3 great aunts!"

I thought maybe it is a sexist thing: his grandfather's sisters are great-aunts but his grandmother's are just aunts. I have no idea. P's link only confirmed the relationship that Flora and Céline are his grandmother's sisters, but it did not explain why the narrator does not call them great aunts.

Proustitute wrote: "Gail, I'm all for psychoanalysis, but I think there's a difference between using psychoanalysis as a literary critical tool to analyze a text and psychoanalyzing the narrator. That's all I'm saying..."

There is indeed, of course. A difference doesn't necessarily mean one is intrinsically better than the other though - although the former is the more traditional way of doing it among academic circles, it's true. :-)

If not a tool, the only other thing I could think of is French society or rural society looking at the female line of descent and relationships a little differently to what we're used to nowadays.

Moonbutterfly, safe to say you are thinking along the right lines. IMO: Everything a writer writes means something on two levels (i.e. beyond advancing a plot, the sentence or grouping of images or storyline serves a symbolic function too. These can be intentional and consciously thought about and equally not.) So for some readers and critics there is that Oedipal element, whether intentionally written by Proust or not.

When people decide that the narrator's desire for his mother is oedipal, do they see this as a psychoanalysis/diagnosis of the narrator? Or does the fact that Oedipus is a literary character mean that they see it as more of a literary interpretation?

Personally, I'm not (yet, at least - being only 17% of the way through Swann's Way) convinced that it is necessarily oedipal. Although the fact that Proust and Freud were contemporaries might suggest a consciousness and awareness on Proust's part.

Jim wrote: I wonder what Proust thought when/if he read or heard critiques of ISOLT? Could they be talking about the sick man struggling to breathe in his cork-lined room.

Proustitute wrote: I'd be curious to know how Proust dealt with André Gide's rejection of Swann's Way, undertaking to publish it on his own, etc.

I believe these two questions are quite different. Once an art form is given life, it becomes separate - others read it - view it - through the lens of their life, experience, personality, knowledge, education, etc...creating a new life...sometimes quite far removed from the intent of the writer or artist...but I think no less valid.

Rejection of one's work and/or searching for a means to expose it to a larger audience does not have the same personal challenge of having given "birth" and reconciling the inevitable separation that occurs once it has entered the world.

Proust seems to be acknowledging that we as readers will each bring our own perspective to his work when he explores humans as multi-facted social beings.

EDIT: Sorry...I can't seem to turn off the italics! :-)

Hi everyone! I'm really excited to be joining this group. ISOLT is my dad's favorite book (and he has a PhD in the history and theory of the novel so he knows about good books) and I've always intended to read it "someday" but have never made it past the first 100 pages or so.

So far I am most struck by the idea Proust seems to be suggesting in a hundred ways: that our experience is a much less solid thing than we imagine it to be.

For example, we are simultaneously introduced to two versions of Swann--the Swann that the narrator perceives as a child and the Swann he perceives as an adult, who is someone completely different. We also have two versions of the narrator--the child, who perceives one way, and the adult, who perceives things differently. It seems to me that the trouble with recapturing the past is that not only does the present moment change with time--we change with time, too. So even if one could relive the past, it would not be the same, because the person experiencing it would be different. As in the theory of relativity, things look different depending on who the observer is.

Cameron wrote: "For example, we are simultaneously introduced to two versions of Swann--the Swann that the narrator perceives as a child and the Swann he perceives as an adult, who is someone completely different."

Have you ever had a friend that you thought you knew really well? And then perhaps you've had that friend over your house along with other friends, and then those two friends talk and you listen and learn that there is still so much more about that initial friend that you did not know?

To me, this is what Proust was alluding to when he talked about the different versions of M. Swann. All we know of our friends is what we attribute to them based on our own experiences of them, but in fact there's usually a lot more that we don't see (due to our own inabilities to see them, not of theirs to share it.)

That's a major theme in Proust IMO. The inscrutability of "the Other", even of the self, frankly. If not solipsism, it comes close. Not as depressing or isolating as all that, P just likes to remind us that although "no man is an iland" there can still be a lot of sea between you and the next island. Reminds me of this:

http://hateandanger.files.wordpress.c...

So I'd agree Jason. We only see facets of our friends, and even our lovers.

Welcome to the board, Cameron. I would say your Father has good taste :D I hope you enjoy your read.

Cameron wrote: "It seems to me that the trouble with recapturing the past is that not only does the present moment change with time--we change with time, too. "

Yes, I agree - Proust is constantly showing the impossibility of recapturing the past as something static and objectively real. For instance, take his description of how his great aunt used to persecute his grandmother by telling her that his grandfather was drinking alcohol and that she needed to stop him. He sees it as persecution, describing his grandmother's distress, but then muses that over time, when it happens over and over, people see it as funny, and don't see it as persecution at all. The idea of habit making something cruel appear harmless fun. And then he completely upturns the perspective by adding, a little later, that actually, he has since come to realise that his grandmother was a lot less concerned about her husband's drinking habits and a lot more concerned with his (the narrator as a young boy) weak health and uncertain future.

Proustitute wrote: "Moonbutterfly wrote: "I think this little guy is going to have problems in the future regardless of what labels we put on it. "

Don't we all? :)"

Well said.

I have just started reading "Paris and the Arts, 1851 -1896 from the Goncourt Journal" (mentioned, I think, by Aloha in the Group Lounge. Among other things it is successfully shifting my perspective of reading ISOLT to a time contemporary with the first half of Proust's life...out of the lens of my world and closer to his.

From my side I do not have much interest in diagnosing the Narrator, nor in psychoanalytical interpretations. Many of the characteristics of the Narrator belonged to Marcel Proust as well. He adored his mother and father and he is reflecting something similar in his fictional character. I doubt he was doing this because he was putting into practice ideas heard from Vienna or elsewhere.

I also think that Proust was just an asthmatic person, like several people I know, but because of having a hypochondriac tendency, also like some people I know, eventually got himself truly sick because he diagnosed himself. Had he not done this, in today’s world, he would have just been someone who had to be careful with his asthma.

What interests me most about his work is his writing. His command of the language is wonderful, his descriptions are unequaled and his perceptions of people’s inner motives are baffling. I am really looking forward, when I have finished the whole work, to read those studies devoted to an analysis of his language such as his sentence structure etc…

But it is interesting to see many different topics are being raised in this forum.

Proustitute wrote: "Kalliope, yes. I know I mentioned The Weather in Proust on an auxiliary thread, but it's well worth reading the title essay after the Recherche. Sedgwick not only offers a Buddhist reading, but she..."

I tend to be a bit skeptical of Buddhist ideas with a Western tint, but I trust your judgment and I just read your review of the book. The weather was obviously very important for Proust. There was a time (I do not remember very well, but may be it was during the war), when he was considering very seriously to leave Paris and move south to a friendlier weather. It is hard to judge how bad his asthma was because he liked to relish on it.

Kalliope wrote: "I also think that Proust was just an asthmatic person, like several people I know, but because of having a hypochondriac tendency, also like some people I know, eventually got himself truly sick because he diagnosed himself. Had he not done this, in today’s world, he would have just been someone who had to be careful with his asthma."

Ah, see, I would see that as a diagnosis/psychoanalysis too - of hypochondria. :-) I haven't read enough yet to know if I agree, and I would be more wary of that sort of analysis, because it constitutes more of a value judgement than an observation - but it's a possibility. Of course, asthma can kill though, regardless of whether or not someone is a hypochondriac about it, and of course medicine back then was considerably less advanced than it is today. I'm curious how self-diagnosis could kill someone - well, unless they then start to inappropriately treat themselves for their self-diagnosed illness. Is this what Proust did? What did he diagnose himself with?

Yes, Proust was a enthusiastic self-medicator, Gail. In his biography, Carter says he spent around USD 20,000 on drugs/medical aids in just one year.

In addition to self medicating with veronal/barbiturates, bromides, "fuigating powders", opium, many cups of strong coffee, Proust also a few times tried adrenalin, and once nearly died from not diluting it properly.

It was a typical case of uppers and downers, really. Couple this with bouts of insomia, mania for writing (Proust once wrote to a friend that he stayed up for three days writing) and in 1912-13, a work ethic that saw him literally wasting away from not eating "correctly", and you have a picture of a man with fragile health indeed. I once found a pretty funny webpage where one reader was grappling with finding out all the drugs listed. I'll have a look and see if I can find it again.

EDIT: Here it is :)

http://thanksgivingisruined.blogspot....

It seems there may be some confusion here.

On the one hand there is the use of psychoanalysis as a literary tool to approach a work of fiction. This may seem satisfactory to some readers and not to others.

On the other there are references to some factual information presented by well-documented biographies of a real person.

Not quite the same thing.

Kalliope wrote: "On the other there are references to some factual information presented by well-documented biographies of a real person."

Ah, well, factual information is the stuff that Nick is talking about - about Proust self-medicating. That is very interesting, and definitely could have contributed to his illness. But generally when people call someone a hypochondriac, it's a speculation, based on certain evidence, but not always true - after all, many have been dismissed as hypochondriacs by doctors who can't find anything wrong with them, and then another, more experienced (or more thorough) doctor finds something serious and rare.

Hence I'd be hesitant to call a real person (particularly someone I've never met, and who is from a different era) a hypochondriac, because you're basically calling them a liar. Even if they're self-medicating, that doesn't necessarily make them a hypochondriac - they could be doing it because they are aware they have some genuine disease that has not been discovered by doctors, and they really want to fix it and are trying everything they can.

On the other hand, it would be an interesting thing to speculate about a character, and of course in a text there can be clues that the author is suggesting their character to be a hypochondriac. Whether or not authorial intention is relevant to our interpretations is another matter, of course, but it's something I find interesting.

Proustitute wrote: "But Kalliope, don't you think ISOLT should be read as fiction?

Sure, there are autobiographical elements, but I wonder if bringing Proust's life to bear on his work is in some way minimizing it as..."

I like to know everything about the work, including the biography of the author. But I agree that a work can be tainted with speculations about the author's life. For example, E.B. White had a lifelong problem with anxiety, and writing soothes him. When you read E.B. White's work, you don't see any indication of that.

Proustitute wrote: "Sure, there are autobiographical elements, but I wonder if bringing Proust's life to bear on his work is in some way minimizing it as a work of art."

Proustitute, I would like to ask a question. I'm trying to see where you are coming from, because your approach to literature seems very different from mine and I'm trying to get my head around it.

Do you see our role in this discussion as needing to maximise Proust's work? As if Proust, as a regular, flawed human being, is somehow sullying an immortal piece of artwork by being associated with it? Or are you just asking this as the academic question of whether an author's life and thoughts are relevant to our interpretation of his/her work, in order to spark some discussion?

Proustitute wrote: "The latter."

Ah, okay. Thanks!

I didn't agree with Gail's initial point, but after looking for it, I came to a different conclusion. In the quote above, its sounds like neurosis."

I think he seems neurotic too, although in general I don't like that word, because it's used in a derogatory way in all kinds of contexts just when a person (generally a woman!) gets upset or worried about something, but I think it does genuinely apply to the narrator of this novel. :-)

BTW, my point about autism was a speculation, and a tentative one at that - a sort of 'Gosh, there are aspects of this that I really relate to and which are quite specific to the autism spectrum - I wonder if Proust was on the autism spectrum' rather than an 'I henceforth diagnose Proust with ASD!'

There are also aspects of the novel which make me think he doesn't seem on the spectrum - like his ability to read the subtle emotional changes on his mother's face. People on the autism spectrum generally aren't good at reading emotions in faces - although if that's a detail they focus on, they can be. But my overall conclusion so far would be that he's not 'neurotypical'. I'm really fascinated to read about his life.

Interestingly, Nick's description of Proust as having 'bouts of insomia, mania for writing (Proust once wrote to a friend that he stayed up for three days writing) and in 1912-13, a work ethic that saw him literally wasting away from not eating "correctly"' could easily be a description of someone on the autism spectrum. It could of course be other things instead, but, to demonstrate how certain behaviours can be interpreted very differently, the word 'mania' could easily be substituted with 'hyperfocus'. People on the autism spectrum often stay up for days doing something they're hyperfocused on, and easily forget to eat in the process, or eat badly because it's hard to focus on eating correctly when focusing on something else. But then, to give a different example, people with bipolar also can do this (in which case it would be called 'mania').

I agree, there is a sense in which it doesn't matter, but I also find it interesting to play with these ideas.

Moonbutterfly wrote: "And so, for the first time, my sadness was regarded no longer as punishable offense but as an involuntary ailment that had just been officially recognized, a nervous condition for which I was not r..."

Here is the passage in French. Since I'm not fluent enough to make subtle interpretations, anybody who's fluent in French would like to have a take on the true meaning of this statement?

maman lui répondit : « Mais il ne sait pas lui-même, Françoise, il est énervé ; préparez-moi vite le grand lit et montez vous coucher. » Ainsi, pour la première fois, ma tristesse n’était plus considérée comme une faute punissable mais comme un mal involontaire qu’on venait de reconnaître officiellement, comme un état nerveux dont je n’étais pas responsable ; j’avais le soulagement de n’avoir plus à mêler de scrupules à l’amertume de mes larmes, je pouvais pleurer sans péché.

I just created a new thread for group members who would like a place to discuss Proust's life: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

Kall: I'm of the opinion that in the end, all that matters is the book, and that the other stuff is secondary :) Interesting, but secondary.

Recall again that Proust overturned Saint-B's idea that one must know the teller of the tale to know the truth of the tale. IMO: All we really need to know to judge ISOLT aesthetically are the principles and artistic dimensions it establishes and operates under. The tale is all!

(Now whether Proust was so set against SB because of his own fears, qualities, traits or ways of living, who knows. ;¬) )

Is there a true meaning which is not captured by the translation? My French is not fluent, but I thought it was quite self-explanatory. I might be missing something subtle, but my interpretation was this:

The kid's always been made to feel like he's misbehaving for being so sensitive (and you could add whiny and manipulative!), as if he's doing something wrong, so he has guilt and possible punishment added to his sadness. But his mum explains to everyone that he's not himself, that he can't help it, that it's his nerves - and so he is relieved, because then he can simply cry, without having his sadness complicated with the uncomfortable feelings of guilt.

I didn't actually think this particular incident sounded like neurosis - I thought it sounded like quite a normal childhood experience to which I could easily relate! I may be wrong - as I'm not 'normal' myself! - but it's something I observe in kids in general. It's nice and comforting for them to be absolved of guilt for a certain behaviour - to hear an adult say that it's because they're tired or because they're unwell. So then they can simply cry instead of cry and fight and try to defend themselves.

I'm having a good laugh over this. Well, I better go get some things done and turn in early. I have a big date with Kris tomorrow. Don't want to miss the train.

Nick wrote: "Kall: I'm of the opinion that in the end, all that matters is the book, and that the other stuff is secondary :) Interesting, but secondary.

Recall again that Proust overturned Saint-B's idea tha..."

I agree with you, Nick. As a historian, I do love understanding cultural context to provide me with a foundation to approach my reading of a work of literature, but I try to avoid conflating the narrator or characters in a work of fiction with the writer. There may be some insights to be gained there, but I worry about the losses from a reductionist approach greatly overpowering the benefits. (I'm also still recovering from reading Erikson's psychobiography of Martin Luther in graduate school....) This is just my view -- I don't claim that this is the only, or the correct, way to read a work of literature. It is, however, the approach I am most comfortable with.

Aloha wrote: "I'm having a good laugh over this. Well, I better go get some things done and turn in early. I have a big date with Kris tomorrow. Don't want to miss the train."

Looking forward to it, Aloha! :)

While they're diagnosing Proust, we'll rock NYC! Good night and see ya tomorrow!

I'm still obsessing over those little cookies. As far as I'm concerned, it's all about the cookies.

Thanks, Moonie!

Sentences in Proust

From Protests with Parasols in LRB 12/20/12
Michael Wood reviews Barbara Rose's Proust Among the Nations: From Dreyfus to the Middle East

Reading a sentence in Proust decides Jean Genet to become a writer:

"She has a wonderful comment on Genet's reading of Proust, which leads us into a dark old world of social antics that may still cast their protracted shadows. The sentence Genêt read in prison, thinking, 'Now I'm calm, I know l'm going to go from one marvel to another,' was this one, in Scott Moncrieff's translation:

'My mother, when it was a question of our having M de Norpois to dinner for the first time, having expressed her regret that Professor Cottard was away from home and that she herself had quite ceased to see anything of Swann, since either of these might have help-ed to entertain the ex-ambassador, my father replied that so eminent a guest, so distinguished a man of science as Cottard could never be out of place at a dinner-table, but that Swann, with his ostentation, his habit of crying aloud from the house-tops the name of everyone he knew, however slightly, was a vulgar show-off whom the Marquis de Norpois would be sure to dismiss as - to use his own epithet - a 'pestilent' fellow.' (Vol. II)

We might think that only a writer, or an about-to-be writer, could care about this sentence, since its chief interest seems to be the wily meanderings of its grammar. But the diction is interesting too, with ail its transferred assumptions and aspersions. And if Genêt couldn't have seen the comedy Proust is offering here - in the previous volume his narrator has presented Cottard as an idiot and Charles Swann as the most discreet of men, driven to name-dropping only by his desire to impress the woman he loves and her terrible crowd of friends - he saw something else, and this is what Rose brilliantly sees him seeing:

'The sentence that blows Genet's mind, his induction into the world of Proust, is a sentence about social caste. What it reveals beneath, or rather through, the social veneer is perfectly vicious . . . But what the sentence contains, what it slowly but surely glides toward through the twists and turns of Proust's famous syntax, is the stench of the Jew ('puant' is the last word). Genêt most likely will not have registered Swann's Jewishness from those lines, but he will undoubtedly have picked up the whiff of the social outsider.'"

See Auxiliary Reading Chit Chat http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/9... for references

Moonbutterfly wrote: "Not Proust! I'm worried about the little boy. Come on now. Hehehe. Gail seems worried about Proust though ..."

Me? Nah - I'm more worried about the little boy's grandmother, being meanly teased by the evil great aunt and then walking in circles round the garden getting her skirt muddy! :-)

I'm off to bed while you're all off partying! It's past midnight here!

Before you go to bed...make travel plans for New York City. The Morgan's Library's exhibit of the 100th Anniversary of "Swann's Way." February 15th-April 28th, 2013. http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/...

Proustitute wrote: "Also, as Swann is described as having "fair, almost red hair, dressed in the Bressant style," here's an image showing Jean Baptiste Prosper Bressant's hair:"

I am so glad you posted this picture. The footnote in the book describes the style as "crew cut in front and longer in the back" which conjured visions of a mullet haircut. I really didn't want to picture a blondish Billy Ray Cyrus when picturing Swann. Thanks for the brain scrubbing....

Brian wrote: "Proustitute wrote: "Also, as Swann is described as having "fair, almost red hair, dressed in the Bressant style," here's an image showing Jean Baptiste Prosper Bressant's hair:"

I am so glad you p..."

LOL! Now I need a brain scrubbing.

Proustitute wrote: "Moonbutterfly wrote: "I think this little guy is going to have problems in the future regardless of what labels we put on it. "

Don't we all? :)"

Like the draper, who keeps washing his hands, "which it was his habit, every few minutes..." the child narrator and Proust may have been a tad more focused on whatever they felt passionate about at the time.
Without those obsessions...we could be reading Ruskin and never know the Proustian-person we are today.

Proustitute wrote: "But Kalliope, don't you think ISOLT should be read as fiction?


Yes, Proustitute. That is exactly my point.

What I am saying regarding the analysis of this work of fiction is that psychoanalyzing or diagnosing the Narrator does not interest me much (my first paragraph in comment #218 above). The literary focus I prefer is the one offered by, for example, La Phrase de Proust: Des Phrases de Bergotte Aux Phrases de Vinteuil and Proust's Narrative Techniques recommended by Eugene. But I will not be able to tackle those until I have finished reading La recherche.

The only diagnoses that can be discussed with comfort are those that were given to Marcel Proust by his doctors. And those are the only ones I mentioned. But as these references to the real Proust seem to have been understood instead in reference to the Narrator in La recherche, I drew the distinction in comment #223.

The factual evidence on Proust’s health that I was referring to is found in Carter’s extensive and meticulously documented biography. Marcel Proust was diagnosed asthma at an early age and he developed his hypochondriac and fatal habit of diagnosing and medicating himself increasingly through time. It is painful to read how much Veronal and on which conditions he was taking it -- for example, mixing it with Adrenaline, and refusing to eat (or eat only icecream). Marcel even once forbid his brother Robert (who got the Légion d’Honneur thanks to his medical practice before Marcel did for his literary achievement) to enter his house if Robert’s intention was to treat him (page 800 in Carter). At least once his doctor considered pumping out his stomach, but was considered too weak to be able to practice it. Proust died relatively young because of a cold and to quote Carter “Marcel, son and brother of distinguished doctors, refused all medical treatment, trusting instead to his and Celeste’s (the maid) remedies” (page 801). The cold irremediably developed into the pneumonia that brought his death. (Kris, thank your for creating the thread for Proust's life, any further comment on this I will post there).

As for the relevance or importance of reading and knowing about the life of an author as a way to approach the person’s work, I fully agree with Nick. It is relative. Proust would have said (well, actually said in his Contre Sainte-Beuve) that not at all. I discussed this already in my review of Carter, which some of you have read. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...

I think the same regarding other texts that help contextualize the literary work. They are not necessary but may help in understanding it better. Currently I am reading
The Proustian Quest, also by Carter. In this other book the emphasis is on what aspects of the times, such as the perceived acceleration of time brought about by the inventions of the bicycle, the motorcar, the airplane etc.., are found in the text of La recherche. This book is also worthwhile reading.

And it is in this contextualizing effort that it is also worthwhile reading Anatole France, Racine, Huysmanns, Bourget etc… As we proceed with the remaining 51 weeks as established in the reading schedule of La recherche, I will be able to discuss more of the actual text.

Now, back to Combray and to Proust's writing abilities.

As a total ISoLT newbie, yay for such fascinating threads and so much to find in 64 pages! I don’t know to what extent I’ll be able to participate in the discussions; with two little kids, either reading or typing has got to give for me – plentiful goodnight kisses and regular bedtime reading for them take up all kinds of lost time – and typing is usually the one that goes. But I am super excited to be here!! I’ll try to keep up.

First, I want to say how interested I have been in your discussion of the various critical approaches we can apply to the book, specifically, ways to use psychoanalytic tools and being informed by/de-emphasizing authorial biographical information. There are so many lenses through which we can view a text, and probably, we each derive different values from different approaches. So it’s great to see how folks are coming at this book in such diverse ways. At 91.5 pages in, I’m getting a sneaking feeling that this text is robust enough to support a whole array of readings.

I guess I’m a little weird theoretically omnivorous, but as long as I’m conscious of the attributes of each, I like applying different critical approaches to same book to highlight its various facets. Kind of like how, contingent upon perception, one Swann can hold many Swanns.

And speaking of contingent Swanns, I have loved being plunged into the fluid, dreamy world of this book. Proust seems to show not only how one can contain many, but also how malleable are the boundaries between “distinct”categories: present/past, dream/reality, love/pain, animate/inanimate. “Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves and not anything else, by the immobility of our conception of them” (ML 5). Gorgeous.

Also surprised and grateful to find humor in here.

Aloha wrote: "Daniel wrote: "Funny how I remembered the passage about the narrator's recollection of his mother's goodnight kiss. I had read it about ten years ago and it is one of the passages I remember best....."

Thank you Aloha. It did feel slightly frustrating to read only 5 pages at a time.

Kalliope wrote: "Daniel wrote: "Funny how I remembered the passage about the narrator's recollection of his mother's goodnight kiss. I had read it about ten years ago and it is one of the passages I remember best....."

Merci beaucoup!

Daniel wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Daniel wrote: "Funny how I remembered the passage about the narrator's recollection of his mother's goodnight kiss. I had read it about ten years ago and it is one of the passages ..."

De rien!