All About Books discussion

A thread for the discussion of Book 6 - The Fugitive in Marcel Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time.

Best. Opening. Ever.

(despite its consequences...)

Now I'm going to have to rush through the last pages of The Captive to find out......

Well, The Captive has The. Best. Ending. Ever... :)

Well.....now you've done it! My nose won't come out of the book all night!

I have to say that as much as Proust likes to ramble on and on, he does leave us with cliff-hangers at the end of each book.
One is glad to finally get to the end and.....wham!......one wants to start the next book. LOL!

I'll get here not before a month or so!!! I'm so far behind!

I'm going to take a break for a few days - my nerves are raw from The Prisoner.

@Joan To answer your question... To me, (view spoiler)[ it was the best ending ever that Albertine finally fled from Marcel. My spirits soared in the wake of finishing Vol. 5 and starting a little bit into Vol. 6. (hide spoiler)]

Did he really (view spoiler)[ bring a young girl home just to sit her on his lap for awhile!!!!!???!!!!! (hide spoiler)]
I had to laugh when (view spoiler)[he arranged for Saint Loupe to go find her and talk with her since keeping those two apart was part of his original plan after they met in Balbec. (hide spoiler)]

Tom, I probably haven't gotten to the "best opening ever" part???

Tom wrote: "@Joan To answer your question... To me, [spoilers removed]"

It sure was a relief, but now I'm 30 pages into The Fugitive and on tenterhooks that (view spoiler)[ she'll return to him. He gets more insufferable by the paragraph. (hide spoiler)]
"We lie with our suffering as in a bed too narrow, too hard, and too cold."
Indeed, somehow I haven't much sympathy.

I'm feeling my age as I read this and wonder were we all so self-dramatizing at 21?

Best middle ever!

Petra wrote: "Did he really [spoilers removed]
I had to laugh when [spoilers removed]

Tom, I probably haven't gotten to the "best opening ever" part???"

It is very near the beginning. (view spoiler)[Albertine's letter - finally, Albertine gets to tell him a thing or two. (hide spoiler)]

Ahhhhh.....that! Yes, I did smile at that but that smile was wiped away quickly as we started to ruminate at length again about how we want her now that she's gone but didn't want her yesterday while she was there.
♫ Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got til it's gone. ♫

He's one of those people who are never happy and always wish for what they currently don't have.

I did mention there were consequences, but I'd stopped reading just after the letter so I didn't have to face them immediately.

I forget who posted about knowing the heart of another. I think we are all past the part where Marcel realizes (finally) that he doesn't know his own heart. He knows is intellectual models about how he reasons things should be, but no necessarily how they are. I think this runs the opposite to most humans who believe what they want to believe rather than how their reason dictates. I vaguely remember a quote along the lines of - the intellect is and should be subservient to the will, but I don't remember who said it. Hume?

Oddly enough, despite all the navel gazing, I'm finding Le Roman d'Albertine the most interesting part of In Search of Lost Time.

Tom wrote: "I forget who posted about knowing the heart of another. I think we are all past the part where Marcel realizes (finally) that he doesn't know his own heart. He knows is intellectual models about ho..."

Tom, the quote about intellect vs will intrigued me - I found this at my favorite on-line philosophy site
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hu...
Hume's position in ethics, which is based on his empiricist theory of the mind, is best known for asserting four theses: (1) Reason alone cannot be a motive to the will, but rather is the “slave of the passions” (see Section 3) (2) Moral distinctions are not derived from reason (see Section 4). (3) Moral distinctions are derived from the moral sentiments: feelings of approval (esteem, praise) and disapproval (blame) felt by spectators who contemplate a character trait or action (see Section 7). (4) While some virtues and vices are natural (see Section 13), others, including justice, are artificial (see Section 9). There is heated debate about what Hume intends by each of these theses and how he argues for them. He articulates and defends them within the broader context of his metaethics and his ethic of virtue and vice.

Don't read this until you are at least 50% done with the book.
(view spoiler)[ The narrator's description of mourning and how he needed to forget thousands of Albertines reminded me of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, I really liked that book, mostly. (hide spoiler)]

Tom wrote: "I forget who posted about knowing the heart of another. I think we are all past the part where Marcel realizes (finally) that he doesn't know his own heart. He knows is intellectual models about ho..."

As when the narrator comments on the photo of Albertine - when we look at a picture of a loved one we see so much that isn't actually there.

Petra wrote: "Ahhhhh.....that! Yes, I did smile at that but that smile was wiped away quickly as we started to ruminate at length again about how we want her now that she's gone but didn't want her yesterday whi..."

LOL - just the break I needed listening to different versions of Big Yellow Taxi.

As he is reminiscing, our narrator says that Albertine's compliance with his unreasonable demands caused him to become harsher and more demanding. Do you think so, or is that more of him evading responsibility?

It seems Marcel is keyed to the color blue, as it comes up at various points in the novel (In Search of Lost Time). His magic lantern sheds blue light as do the stained glass panes of the churches he sees in Swann's Way. He mentions in the present volume of a streak of blue in the sunset that cuts him to the core in The Fugitive. There's also a reference to something else in The Captive if I recall correctly.

Joan wrote: "As he is reminiscing, our narrator says that Albertine's compliance with his unreasonable demands caused him to become harsher and more demanding. Do you think so, or is that more of him evading re..."

I honestly don't think the notion of being responsible has occurred to him.

You're both way ahead of me.

Joan, as to responsibility, I agree with Tom. Our narrator doesn't seem to have a notion on responsibility.

As a general statement, though, I think that line of thinking is possible. If a victim is compliant, that must make the abuser's actions correct and perhaps be seen by the abuser to be too weak. The abuser would then tighten up his actions.
The abuser in any situation would need to feel that the power is in his/her hands. A compliant victim indicates less power.

@Petra I think Joan's way ahead of both of us.

I have been reading the Kindle edition of In Search of Lost Time, and a few disappointments have presented themselves, such as the lack of page numbers and chapter dividers within the books.

I don't have chapter dividers either. There is occasionally a 1" gap between the end of a sentence and the beginning of another. I assume these are the chapter dividers within the books.

I've made little progress since last week. I want to get back to this soon.
It's a surprisingly good read......despite all that navel gazing. I really like the characters. They grow on you.

On my Kindle there is sort of a browse without losing your page feature, and that is where the chapters within the book lie. Which is really weird to me. Why not put them on the table of contents, unless the Kindle only supports two content levels.

Tom, blue does seem to be a theme - the blue ocean seems to be a thing for Balbec and his early memories of Albertine.

When Aimee writes the letters, (view spoiler)[ could he be lying about what the bath house attendant and laundress tell him just to keep getting money from our narrator? (hide spoiler)]

I'm reading 1984 (George Orwell) and the importance of memory is brought to the fore in it as well. It's tough enough to remember the past without altering it.

On a lighter note, I loved Total Recall, the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

Joan wrote: "On a lighter note, I loved Total Recall, the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie."

I was just thinking about that link I posted when we started reading In Search of Lost Time - about people who actually do have total recall. While they can relive the happy moments of their lives, they also can do the same with the sad moments too.

Tom, do people with total recall remember both the factual events and their feelings at the time. That would be strange, to have to relive the feelings of my thirteen-year-old old self, for example. Ugh, a period best forgotten!

Petra, I haven't really connected with most of the characters.
I know the decadence of the upper classes is said to a theme of this series; nevertheless (view spoiler)[ I did feel sorry for Charlus and I'm charmed by Saint Loup - (hide spoiler)] I hope he doesn't let me down.

@Joan I think that the terms used were relived, so it's very likely the memories stir up the associated feelings.

It's hard to fathom how my fifty-seven year-old self could relive the reactions of my twelve-year- old self.

Then too, so much of memory is subjective - like did your friend say hello with a grin or a smirk.

Has anyone sat down to read Proust and quickly realize that you're not absorbing/understanding any of it? That's me tonight. It happens now and again.

That happens to me, too, sometimes, Tom. I just put it down and read something lighter for a day or two. Proust requires the attention.

A bit of a catch-up:

I was pleased that the narrator didn't get away with taking that little girl home with him. He got off light but at least he had his wrists slapped.

At times I find the ruminating on losing Albertine, whether he's in love with her or not, how to get her back, etc. a bit much but Proust also words things so well and its insightful, therefore, interesting as well. A bit of a conundrum.

He's so all over the place with his thoughts and his strategies of getting Albertine back are bizarre:
- I'll tell her I don't want her back
- I'll tell her about lovely presents so that she'll come running back
- I'll make her jealous by having another woman live with me

I'm about half way through the book. Just after the beginning, it started to get boring but it's picked up again and I'm reinvested. I hope to make better progress in the coming week.

Joan, you're finished, aren't you?
Tom, how are you doing? Have you gotten past the section that was making your eyes glaze last night?

I think I am about 3/4 of the way through chapter one, slogging through the Albertine ruminations. I understand that they are very finely observed, and sometimes maddeningly stated (super long sentences, an aggravating love of double negatives), but I keep thinking, am I going to remember all this? The answer being no, more than likely. I'll just remember the slog.

I'm not sure where Chapter 1 ends.
I think I know the general section where you are at, Tom. That part was difficult for me, too. It has picked up, so whether or not I'm still in Chapter 1, it does start to get more interesting.
All I'll remember from that section is the agonizing over "why did she leave me before I could ask her to leave? Didn't she know I love her and want her to stay (so that I can kick her out)?"
He's bizarre.

I can post the chapter headings if you like.

My edition doesn't have any chapter headings or indication of chapters. There's the occasional 1" spacing, that may be chapters, I'm not sure.
I don't think it really matters other than for reference. Thanks anyway, Tom.

I've finished Chapter 1 - which ends ..." as I had given Albertine the agate marble or other gifts from Gilberte. "
at first I was having a hard time focusing, too. I set a 15 page per day target for myself when we started this series, but the narrator's stratagems & neuroses where slowing me down. Then suddenly the book became a page-turner for me. The psychological turmoil at the end of Chapter 1 seems so true, and well described, I just couldn't stop reading.
(view spoiler)[ His description of mourning the sudden death of a loved one, put the emotional roller coaster into words for me.
I'm enjoying the trajectory from love to art as he realizes that for him, at least, love is disappointing. He falls in love with a mental image, they don't live up to his fantasy, he gets bored and forgets them eventually.
(hide spoiler)]
I wonder how different this section would be if Proust had ever had a child. I know he was gay, but he would have experienced a different kind of love.

But in the last 2 days I've only managed 5 pages - so much for my plan. "The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men / Gang aft agley" :-)

TOM, the opening page of chapter 2 describes just what I was wondering about the emotional memory of people with total recall...like revisiting train stations he'd past through on the journey out.
I'm not sure whether to be pleased or worried that I was thinking like Proust.

I've just gotten to the part where Marcel receives Aime's letter.

(view spoiler)[He also seems to be chastising her (hypocritically) for the (allegedly in her case) doing the exact same things he was - flirting with peasant girls etc. (hide spoiler)]

Hypocrisy not exactly a surprise, is it? But, I thought Aime might be supplying "alternate facts" in order to keep the paychecks flowing.
But then I'm often just cynical.

"Whatever our social position, however wise our precautions, when the truth is confessed we have no hold over the life of another person.
Why had she not said to me: "I have those tastes:? I would have yielded, would have allowed her to gratify them."

Isn't he contradicting himself here? On the one hand, he says a person has no hold on the life of another; on the other hand he says another person would need him to allow them to live this life.

I'm still not sure where Chapter 1 ends but am pretty sure I'm beyond it. I don't remember that sentence, Tom. I flipped a few pages ahead from the quote above and Aimee's letter is very close.

There's rather a bit more navel gazing, before Chapter Two begins.

So before Aime and the letters, (view spoiler)[ were you surprised by what happened to Albertine? That's what I thought was such a dramatic surprise in this chapter. Am I the only one that was gobsmacked? (hide spoiler)]