Happy new year and holy smokes, was that a wintery winter break! The snow hill by my garage is taller than I am (5’5 1/2”). It made our neighborhood very Currier and Ives, but made wrangling a 9 year old especially nervy. Thank you Mom, for all those long winters that didn’t drive you to homicide.
Robert mentioned that he’d like to read In Search of Lost Time (Also known as Remembrance of Time Past) together, or at least the first volume, Swann’s Way, and I said, “Why not?” I’d tried reading it once before, probably in our daughter’s wildest toddler years, but put it down because I couldn’t scan it.
If you count all the pages in the new translation by Lydia Davis et al, you can read it all in 365 days with some time to spare! It’s only 10 pages a day! Only ten! I’m happy to report that I’m ahead of schedule because I’m exactly the kind of Knausgaard-loving fool that Proust was writing for.
There are a lot of biographies and memoir/criticism books about Proust, but so I’ve I’m sticking to the introductions of the translations only. Let me know if you've read this massive work, what you thought, and any advice!
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/01/lydia-davis-interview-reaction-proust
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/SLT/in-search-of-lost-time/
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/books/the-shape-of-time.html?searchResultPosition=6