Swann's Way

Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, or perhaps more accurately translated from the French, In Search of Lost Time, is one of those works that is on the bucket list of many literary types. However, after reading the first volume, Swann's Way, I would rather kick the bucket than endure the next six volumes.

Talk about a slog. The introduction warns that many readers find it difficult, but I did not heed the warning. It is not difficult in the way that say Finnegan's Wake is difficult--it has correct sentence structure--it's just incredibly boring. Pages go by when I realize I haven't gleaned anything--I might has well be looking at Norse runes. Looking over the synopsis on Wikipedia, I see a different book than the one I read.

The book is most famous for its scene in which the unnamed narrator has a rush of memory following dipping a cookie into some tea: "And soon, mechanically, oppressed by the gloomy day and the prospect of another sad day to follow, I carried to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had let soften a bit of madeleine. But at the very instant when the mouthful of tea mixed with cake crumbs touched my palate, I quivered, attentive to the extraordinary thing that was happening inside me."

The narrator remembers life in a small French town in the 1880s. A Mr. Swann, a man of Jewish extraction, lives nearby, and is entertained at his home. He is a boy, and upstairs in bed, and kicks up a fuss when his mother doesn't kiss him good night. The second part, titled "Swann in Love," is a flashback to when Swann courts Odette, who in the end turns out to be quite the slut. Swann marries her anyway, and in the third part, the narrator is besotted by their daughter, Gilberte.

Sometimes I fancy myself erudite, but this was beyond me. Perhaps the problem is the minimal use of paragraph breaks, which tends to make my eyes go funny. I don't want them like Dr. Seuss, but long passages need to be broken up just to give our minds a chance to reset. Occasionally the writing is quite beautiful, particular when Proust describes a floral scene: "We stopped for a moment in front of the gate. Lilac time was nearly over; a few, still, poured forth in tall mauve chandeliers the delicate bubbles of their flowers, but in many places among the leaves where only a week before they had still been breaking in waves of fragrant foam, a hollow scum now withered, shrunken and dark, dry and odorless."

There are also, especially during the middle section, bon mots about love that stand out amid the dross, such as "She belonged to that half of the human race in whom the curiosity the other half feels about the people it does not know is replaced by an interest in the people it does," or "Swann did not try to convince himself that the women with whom he spent his time were pretty, but to spend his time with women he already knew were pretty."

Swann's Way was translated by Lydia Davis is a new translation, with the other volumes to come by other translators. She has dutifully footnoted the text, as many artists, writers, and historical personages of all types are defined for those of us who would have no clue. It is a smashing job, but it just went over my head. I will not be returning for future volumes.