/lit/ - Literature » Thread #7287991

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Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 23:38:44 No.7287991 View Reply Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288039 >>7289448 >>7289476 >>7289482

Out of all the famous and supposedly greatest books of all time this is the one I see least discussed on here. I thought maybe nobody has read it because of its length but then again people are willing to read IJ so I don't quite get why it's so absent in a forum which tends to give most attention to the 'greats'.

So, has anyone actually read it and is it as incredible as it's made out to be?

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 23:41:29 No.7288006 Report Delete

Quoted By:

I can't take extremely long run-on sentences about flowers, but if someone digs that sort of thing, Proust seems like a pretty insightful dude. Maybe he's more tolerable in French.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 23:42:47 No.7288011 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288045 >>7289504

Well it's double the length of IJ, which means it's a fucking behemoth.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 23:43:33 No.7288015 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288031 >>7288047

what is best translation

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 23:47:04 No.7288031 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7288015
The one in the OP.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 23:48:12 No.7288039 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287991
Woah... I always thought that was a cheese wheel on the cover

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 23:48:56 No.7288045 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7288011
True, but despite this site, like all sites now being for the most part hardcore memers, I've still seen a lot of posters who do seem to fit the bill of very serious readers and yet this book, often cited as the best book ever written is almost never discussed, just seems a bit strange.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 23:49:16 No.7288047 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288062 >>7292142

>>7288015
the modern library classics is the cheapest and most acquirable set (which you should essentially go with, you can buy the whole thing in one bulk cheap af on amazon) however once you REALLY have a hard on for proust, the first volume has been translated by Lydia Davis (swann's way) that easily outshines the MLC edition. However you should still go with modern library first

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 23:51:16 No.7288062 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7288047
>that easily outshines the MLC edition
no, stop shilling davis. she's shit compared to moncrieff.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 09:28:01 No.7289448 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7289499

>>7287991
It's marvelous, the style is unparalleled. Some typical excerpts:

>At daybreak, my face still turned to the wall, and before I had seen above the big inner curtains what tone the first streaks of light assumed, I could already tell what sort of day it was. The first sounds from the street had told me, according to whether they came to my ears dulled and distorted by the moisture of the atmosphere or quivering like arrows in the resonant and empty area of a spacious, crisply frozen, pure morning; as soon as I heard the rumble of the first tramcar, I could tell whether it was sodden with rain or setting forth into the blue. And perhaps these sounds had themselves been forestalled by some swifter and more pervasive emanation which, stealing into my slumber, diffused in it a melancholy that seemed to presage snow, or gave utterance (through the lips of a little person who occasionally reappeared there) to so many hymns to the glory of the sun that, having first of all begun to smile in my sleep, having prepared my eyes, behind their shut lids, to be dazzled, I awoke finally amid deafening strains of music...

Or:

>And the charming woman, in a tone which is really in love with the colours of the country, speaks to us with overflowing enthusiasm of that Normandy where they have lived, a Normandy which must be like an enormous English park, with the fragrance of its high woodlands à la Lawrence, with its velvet cryptomeria in their enamelled borders of pink hortensia, with its natural lawns diversified by sulphur-coloured roses falling over a rustic gateway flanked by two intertwined pear-trees resembling with its free-falling and flowering branches the highly ornamental insignia of a bronze applique by Gauthier, a Normandy which must be absolutely unsuspected by Parisians on holiday, protected as it is by the barrier of each of its enclosures, barriers which the Verdurins confess to me they did not commit the crime of removing. At the close of day, as the riot of colour was sleepily extinguished and light only came from the sea curdled almost to a skim-milk blue...

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 09:32:36 No.7289461 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7289486

Over the years I've seen a lot of posters recommend this book or otherwise exalt it in their posts, but I've seen little actual discussion on it, so I'm wondering if it's a book a lot anons like to pretend to have read

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 09:37:18 No.7289476 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287991
>has anyone actually read it?
yes
>is it as incredible as it's made out to be?
yes, even more incredible if you're into Europe history.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 09:38:51 No.7289482 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7287991
I too would be searching for the time I lost reading this crap. LMFAO

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 09:40:10 No.7289486 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7289488

>>7289461
You don't really "discuss" Proust like you could discuss other writers. There is nothing to talk about, it's not the kind of work you can "use" socially... Either the person has read Proust and he already knows, or he hasn't read and all discussion is pointless.

As a rich, literate MILF once told me:

>Lately, I've been reading Proust, and Proust again... All the rest doesn't matter to me.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 09:41:44 No.7289488 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7289664

>>7289486
>Either the person has read Proust and he already knows, or he hasn't read and all discussion is pointless.
What a shitty cop-out

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 09:45:43 No.7289499 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7289664

>>7289448
>people unironically enjoy purple prose

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 09:47:02 No.7289504 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7288011
But it is broken into 7 volumes, so it is easier to digest

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 10:05:54 No.7289565 Report Delete

Quoted By:

I have a translation of Swann's Way that I tried to read in my early twenties but dropped about halfway. Plan to try again in the future. It's the aforementioned Davis version. At the time, I liked the style a lot but not sure how much of that's due to the translation and how much was just carried over from the original. I didn't find much I could relate to in this French guy's childhood and there wasn't much going on in the book aside from that so I lost interest. There must have been some subtext going on that I didn't get; either that or it pays off later on.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 10:38:33 No.7289664 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7291705

>>7289499
Given the context, it is not "purple prose". The first sentence of the novel is literally:

>For a long time I used to go to bed early.

>>7289488
Some authors are just not made to be discussed (Proust, Lautréamont, etc.). They have no controversy surrounding them, no filiation, no usefulness, and are just meant to be enjoyed as is.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 19:26:57 No.7291705 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7291795

>>7289664
so when De Boton says that Proust can change one's life he's just memeing?

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 19:51:31 No.7291795 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7291890

>>7291705
I guess he's right, but it doesn't contradict my statement.

What's life-changing isn't necessarily something you will be able (or wanting) to discuss.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 20:12:31 No.7291890 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7291795
even though he wrote a book on it?

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 21:19:31 No.7292142 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7288047
I agree that Lydia Davis is a big step up from Moncrieff, but would recommend starting with the Davis volume and switching to Moncrieff editions thereafter.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 21:58:10 No.7292329 Report Delete

Quoted By:

Do you have to read the whole thing?

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