Rating: 
Summary: One of the Great Novels of the Century
Review: This new revision by D J Enright of the Scott Moncrieff/Terence Kilmartin Translation is outstanding. One of the greatest of all translations, of one of the greatest of all novels. The novel itself is one of the most wonderful, enjoyable experiences in literature. While not for everyone, I found all six volumes absolutely compulsive reading. It is with great difficulty that I forced myself to read other things, rather than start re-reading Proust (for the third time). Tom Clancy readers should look elsewhere. However, for readers who love the sensuous pleasures of great writing, nearly everything else will pale by comparison.
Rating:
Summary: This book educates the reader's soul.
Review: How can any work be so dreamy and poetic and at once so precise and analytical? While describing the sensory world with hallucinatory clarity and beauty, Proust simultaneously presents his characters (all quite unforgettable) as if under a microscope, revealing in luminous detail the complex interplay of memory, desire, conscience and habit in their divided hearts. The narrator (young Proust, more or less) divides the work roughly between a nostalgic portrait of childhood summers at his family's country home, and a mordantly funny record of an older friend's humiliating courtship of a notorious woman and subsequent crucifixion by jealousy. Proust has a cruel wit, a supernatural eye for paradox, a taste for the most delicious ironies and above all an all-encompassing wisdom that borders on the mystical - forgiving all, forgetting nothing.
Rating:
Summary: Ah, the madeleine dipped in tea
Review: For the longest time, I was too intimidated to read Proust. Then, one day, I dived into this first volume like jumping into the deep end of a swimming pool. My only regret is not having jumped in sooner.This book is the beginning of one of the greatest novels ever written. The prose and imageries are breathtaking--not at all difficult to read if you take the time to savor each sentence. Proust, like all great writers, makes you read on his terms. But once you've surrendered to the style, what a treasure you find yourself floating in. The themes and characters are universal. It makes me wish I knew French to enjoy Proust untranslated. Swann's Way can be read as its own novel. But once you start, you would surely want to continue on.
Rating:
Summary: The greatest novel ever written. Period.
Review: Proust is one of the very few authors who meets the test of time. After one has absorbed the religious eccentricities of Tolstoy and Dostoevski, they lose some of their appeal. But in Proust there is nothing of the sort. Nothing in him is childish (unless, of course, he is actually describing a child) and nothing in him is pretentious. In fact, I really cherish this novel because it is simply the longest set of true statements which I have ever read. From beginning to end. Proust was obsessed with putting down the truth as he saw it, and in language which has moved many other major authors to tears of admiration and envy. Watch out! The first two volumes (!) really function as an overture, and in volume 3 everything changes, as the novel becomes almost Dickensian. I don't think you will ever be able to forget the Baron de Charlus, or Mme de Guermantes, or Gilberte, or Albertine, or Saint-Loup, or any of the rest of the magnificent cast of characters. Not for everyone, but, then again, TV is for everyone, and who wants that?
Rating:
Summary: Superb!!!!!
Review: I cannot deny that the extension and the slowness of this book can be considered overwhelming... Of course, there is no shirt that will fit everyone. Yet Proust's work is rewarding in every aesthetic sense like not many books that I've read. There is no author capable of writing in such a beautiful way, and Montcrieff's translation is quite accurate, doesn't allow great loss of the author's incredible vocabulary display. I must insist that no library can be considered complete without this opus magna.
Rating: 
Summary: Little happens, a ridiculous amount of analogies; and yet...
Review: This is 600 pages. And it's only the first 1/8 or so of the truly monumental IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME. And the plot, such as it is, could be summarized in 4 or 5 sentences. There are about 3 analogies per page. Yet, somehow, I'm not bored . . . and have just, in fact, ordered the 2nd (of the 6) books that comprise the novel in this edition. That's because I was virtually never bored. I've found the writing to be rather remarkable: elegant and sure. And Proust's exegesis and application of memory and of consciousness are truly, TRULY stupendous, immaculate, intellectually compelling. A caveat: Proust is not for everyone, for his writing is very difficult to read because his language is so dense and exact(ing). But if you think you have the ability and perseverence, give it a go.
Rating:
Summary: Proust's way
Review: I wish I hadn't waited so long to experience Proust, for now having read "Swann's Way," I see that his deeply sensitive prose is a reference point for almost all of the introspective literature of the twentieth century. As the story of a boy's adolescent conscience and aspirations to become a writer, the book's only artistic peer is James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." The narrator is presumably the young Marcel Proust who divides his recollections between his boyhood at his family's country house at Combray and his parents' friend Charles Swann, an art connoisseur. In fact, the path that passes Swann's house, being one of two ways the narrator's family likes to take when they go for walks, gives the book its title. Proust uses the theme of unrequited love to draw a parallel between his young narrator's infatuation with Swann's red-haired daughter Gilberte and Swann's turbulent affair with a woman named Odette de Crecy. Intense romantic obsessions are a Proustian forte. Swann falls for Odette even though she is unsophisticated and frivolous and does not appear to love him nearly as much as he loves her. He is desperate for her, always sending her gifts, giving her money when she needs it, and hoping she will become dependent on him. It comes as no surprise that he is consumed with jealousy when he notices her spending time with his romantic rival, the snobbish Comte de Forcheville, and he is shocked by her lesbian tendencies and rumors of her prostitution. He finally realizes with chagrin that he has wasted years of his life pursuing a woman who wasn't his "type" -- but even this resignation is not yet the conclusion of their relationship. Proust's extraordinary sensitivity allows him to explore uncommon areas of poignancy, perversity, and the human condition. One example is the young narrator's childish insistence on getting a goodnight kiss from his mother at the cost of wresting her attention away from the visiting Swann. Another remarkable instance is the scene in which a girl's female lover spits on the photograph of the girl's deceased father in disrespectful defiance of his wishes for his daughter's decency. And I myself identified with Legrandin, the engineer whose passion for literature and art grants his professional career no advantages but makes him an excellent conversationalist. Few writers can claim Proust's level of elegance and imagery. The long and convoluted sentences, with multiple subordinate clauses tangled together like tendrils of ivy, remind me of Henry James; but Proust is much warmer and more intimate although admittedly he is just as difficult to read. The narration of "Swann's Way" is a loosely connected flow of thoughts which go off on tangents to introduce new ideas and scenes; the effect is similar to wandering through a gallery of Impressionist paintings. And, as though channeling Monet literarily, Proust displays a very poetical understanding of and communication with nature, infusing his text with pastoral motifs and floral metaphors that suggest the world is always in bloom.
Rating:
Summary: Being devoid of inspiration, my title is "TITLE"
Review: Many things have been said about Marcel Proust to myself as the sarrounding adults gushed over the fact that a teenager was reading literature. That said, many of these people confessed they had never finished Proust all the way through; one went all the way to say he had found it too "subjective." If you are reading literature to read literture STAY AWAY FROM THIS BOOK! If you want to read an incredible novel, then go ahead; you will not desecrate Proust's grave. Many times as I read this book, I found myself pausing, almost pained at the beauty of the language. I have read many authors, and have never read such beautiful words; his descriptions seem so divine, and yet he spends the first part of the book saying that he himself can't write! It's one of those moments where you want to shake the author with mental fists, but it's okay; it adds flavour. Proust is probably among the greatest novelists of history (probably one down after Dostoevsky). The title of the series "In Search of Lost Time," immediately gives you the clue of what the theme shall be; moments of wasted time, moments of bliss that you wish to recapture, memories long gone that you wish you could recapture. But, that is the essense of life.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: when i started reading this i could hardly understand it, i had to start over once i got to pg 15 because i was lost, but as soon as i got used to this style of writing i was hooked. Eventually i got to the point that i enjoyed proust page by page instead of making it a race to the finish of the book. i will soon start vol 2, i hope that it can equal the excellent story in vol 1 especially "swann in love" read this book if you can concentrate really well or can get to a quiet place reqularly because it demands, and deserves all of your attention.
Rating:
Summary: The Way by Swann's
Review: With the famous dipping of the madeleine into his tea, Proust begins his fictional/auto-biographical journey through memory and time, alternately seeing his world through the eyes of a younger, more innocent Proust and the weary old man he has become. Random comments on people or places morph into paragraph- and page-long memories, coloured with the rosy tint of time and age, or not, as sometimes is the case. Throughout the novel we are generally confined to the time period of Proust's childhood, but the narrator is very loose with the time frame, effortlessly jumping back and forth through the memories of his boyhood, from the thrill of a mother's kiss to the beauty of flowers and grass along the way by Swann's.
The writing is flowery and beautiful, with long, flowing sentences that seem to evoke places and times buried within us all. Proust is a master of mental imagery, and through the mostly universal experience of his childhood - and while the particulars will not be identical for us all, the thoughts and ideas certainly will - we are able to relive our own childhood, our own desires and dreams, our own gradual awakening and loss of innocence.
While reading Proust, there is a sense that we have settled ourselves within his skin. The writing is so personal and intimate that we, for just a moment, become the little boy Proust, we share his feelings, we understand his pains. This can be uncomfortable at times, but the pleasure of such an intense journey far outweighs the 'warts and all' intimacy. While reading, it seems that nothing - not one thought or feeling - has been held back, and that Proust is willing and almost joyous at the prospect of baring his soul to the world in his six book masterpiece.
Halfway through the first volume, there is a short novella describing one of his father's friends, Swann, and his jealous courtship of the woman who would later become his wife. The change from an intimate 'I' to a less personal 'he' is at first dis-orienting, but thanks to the strength of the writing, this worry is soon dispelled. Of course, by the end of the novel, the purpose of Swann's interlude has become clearer, and it can be imagined that later volumes will shed more light on these mysteries.
There is not much to be said about Proust that hasn't been already, except that the sheer size and density of his work should not be an intimidating factor when reading. Take your time, be slow about it, and read him as the mood takes you. The rewards are there, on every single page, but they will also be there a year from now. And perhaps, when you are that one year older, the search for memory will be that much more desperate, and Proust's own search will be all the more rewarding.
|
