Welcome to Litsy!

This was the easiest Proust volume to follow for me, with far fewer characters being presented, and the referring to my notes that that comes with.

It‘s filled with uniquely profound prose, as it took me through a psychological journey reminding me of many contemporary novels I‘ve read. The shift in setting and happenings was so needed. Our narrator is pretty messed up here but you gotta love him (or at least find the material fascinating).

I felt, but did not believe, that I controlled the future, because I knew that my feeling came from the fact that the future did not yet exist and that I could not therefore be subject to its inevitability.

Oh Mon dieu! I finally finished Volume 5 & it was a struggle. It's the longest of the six volumes and was the most tiresome. So much jealous ranting. It improved near the end, once the narrator stops fixating on Albertine (first in life, then in death.)
I went into this project pretty ignorant & so have no idea how the story unfolds or what the critical reception is. I am curious to see if others struggle with this volume too.
On to Volume 6!

Spent most of last year reading Proust, it felt like…. Seems like I‘m gonna be spending much of this year reading him too. I‘ll get through it though. (I‘m liking it!)

My plan for 2023 was to tackle Proust's masterpiece, to spend my #morningswithMarcel. I figured it would be slow-going and that it might take me longer than a year.
And I was right.
I have about 100 pages left in Volume 5 (the hardest to get through BY FAR). Then one more volume.
It has been an enriching, stimulating, moving, and at time, dull and/or infuriating reading experience thus far. Will be sad & happy when I finally complete it.

I‘m thrilled to be back into my happy reading place. I am already liking this so much better than Volume IV

Jealousy is often nothing but an uneasy desire for domination, applied in the context of love. 🥵

I'm in Volume 5 of In Search of Lost Time. I have read PAGES and PAGES about Albertine. Or rather the narrator's thoughts about Albertine. His obsession, his fascination, his jealousy, his hopes for, his resentment of, his bargaining with....Albertine. PAGES!!!
And then today. A telegram. Albertine is dead. Killed in a horse accident. 🤯 A sentence. Like WTF.
Now cue pages and pages of narrator's grief and self pity. 🙄

This one seems like a smoother read compared to the others, despite an odd stylistic choice going on….

The smell of the twigs in the icy air was like a piece of the past, an invisible ice-floe broken off from a distant winter and floating into my room, striated here and there with a perfume or a light as if by different years into which I found myself plunged once again, swept away even before I had recognized them by the lightheartedness of hopes long since abandoned.

“The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.“

Remembering my favourite neurasthenic, Marcel Proust, on his birthday.

The narrator‘s finally made it to Venice! Hurray!

Casey and I finally made it onto the back step. It‘s still only 10° and I‘m someone for whom anything under 25 is cold, but I‘ll take it after this horrible, never ending winter. Wearing a jacket is a small price to pay for some outdoor reading time.

I made it to the end of THE CAPTIVE (aka THE PRISONER) on this horrible snow day. Now, will the narrator move out of his douchey, controlling arsehole period as he finally takes his long-awaited trip to Venice? I‘ll find out tomorrow in THE FUGITIVE!

And for tonight‘s supper, I paired Proust with Malaysian stuffed tofu puffs and leftover dumpling sauce. This edition‘s got smaller pages and larger typeface than the last few I read, so I‘m aiming for 50 pages per day. It‘s fascinating, as always, even though the narrator‘s a MASSIVE DICK. Dude! Just let Albertine live her happy, bisexual life! Gah!

#Proust2020 finished this last month and am almost finished with The Fugitive (they are usually bundled together as V. 5) but have had to go to a new edition as these delux ones only go to this book. In this volume Albertine says “Oh, Marcel” so I guess our narrator is named. I will admit Albertine gets on my nerves but the writing is still brilliant and we are nearing the end of this obsession and I don‘t go to Proust for plot. Stay well!

Our MC is writing about falling in and all the things he‘s willing to do and get for the woman he loves, but he‘s also writing about the darker side of love, jealousy.

We also get a visit to a salon and the first time performance of a classical work.

Towards the end, we also get a couple of pages with musings on mainly Dostoyevsky, but also other authors.

My feminism runs too deep now not be pissed by men translating a title as simple as ‘Albertine Disparue‘ as ‘The Sweet Cheat Gone.‘ She‘s the victim. How about ‘Albertine Escapes her Abuser‘? You go, Albertine. I love your writing, Marcel, but your alter ego in the book got what he deserved.

Leaving one series by an awkward boy/man about his awkward boy/man self (Karl Ove‘s My Struggle) for another in this one. Second to last book in both series. Gonna need a break from awkwardness after I finish with Knausgaard and Proust. The ‘plus‘ is they both write beautifully.

"Homosexuals would be the best husbands in the world if they did not put on an act of loving other women." [Well, Proust ought to know, shouldn't he?] Finally finished this volume and will set it aside until next summer when I'll read the last volumes of both Proust and Knausgaard. The prose is much too rich to read all at once. Since much of the book evolves around the character of Albertine, I've attached this photo of a bookstore named for her.

"How slow the day is in dying on these interminable summer evenings!" (One of Proust's shorter sentences.)
I saw this book in a Salem shop window last Friday night. The only way to cool down was to walk around and lean your forehead against cool shop windows. #windowshopping #bookart