Waterstones In Search Of Lost Time Vol 1

Author: John Ferngrove

Rating: 5

Review: Having started this book maybe four or five times over the last three years or so, and indeed having firmly concluded that it was not for me, I let myself be persuaded by Clive James' to make one last effort to get past the point at which I usually stalled. That being where the young Marcel is waiting in anguish for his mother to come and kiss him a last goodnight. My difficulty was not just the immense effort required to unpack and assimilate each rambling, labyrinthine sentence. No one enjoys an exquisitely deconstructed stream of consciousness novel more than I do. But when the inner life of the subject is so constrained by the prurient, bourgeois conventions of Proust's times I find that a cloying sense of claustrophobia accumulates in my chest and throat as I read, such that I must put the book aside every few paragraphs to breathe freely again. Even having built up sufficient momentum to break through into the main body of the book and complete it, I cannot say that these sensations have dissipated. I have rather had to accept that this neurotic unease is one of the defining parameters of the reading experience, but one whose discomfort I now recognise is compensated for by Proust's extraordinary power to evoke a corresponding stream of resonant recollection within the reader. Reading Proust there are times when one finds ones locus of awareness suddenly split. One is simultaneously the reader of Proust, and also the reader of the meta-novel, which is the stream of conscious recollection of a fabulously dense associative network of episodes from the reader's own life, that has been activated by his reading of Proust. One may read some novels to take pleasure in the author's facility with language, or one might admire an author for their psychological perspicacity and wisdom. But I would say that the highest expression of the novelistic art is in the conjunction of these dimensions. But there can be few examples of their being so perfectly fused as the scalpel like prose with which Proust dissects the flux of human consciousness with near atomic precision. I would observe that this is not true stream of consciousness, where thoughts are typically left incomplete, and some measure of randomness inevitably pervades their association. Efforts to pin down this kind of realistic consciousness have been notably made by the likes of Joyce or Pynchon. But Proust's stream of consciousness is that of an ideally beautiful mind, where each lapidary thought is completed, tied off and labelled with an exquisitely apt metaphor or simile, and successive thoughts are assembled into a genuinely coherent stream. The difference is somewhat akin to that between rough, fractured granite and pebbles washed smooth by millennia upon a beach. This first instalment breaks broadly into two halves; the first an examination of the childhood recollections of Marcel himself, while the second describes the falling in love of Swann, an adult acquaintance of Marcel's, and its barely perceptible souring into jealousy and finally indifference. Both are poignant; the first for its charming innocence, the second for its unflinchingly meticulous examination of the capacity for self-deception in even the most assured and capable of people. Both will evoke unavoidable resonances in the readers own life, the latter perhaps less comfortably than the former. Proust's humanistic wisdom is demonstrated in the fact that, despite his unerring eye for the frailty and weaknesses to which we are all prone, he casts no blame and invites only sympathy from the reader. The next book in the sequenceIn the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (In Search of Lost Time Vol. 2): In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Vol 2 has arrived today and sits beside me on the desk while I write. I cannot say that I am looking forward to it with entirely unalloyed pleasure. The hint of stifling pressure builds in my throat just to contemplate it. But alongside it, and slightly more compelling is the electrical tingle in the roof of my mouth that is the sublimated appetite to return once more into Marcel's gentle and luminous world. A world that for both better and worse is gone forever, but which thanks to Proust we can experience in our own day, with the same vividness as when we slow our thoughts and open our senses to our own.

Author: Mr N D Willis

Rating: 2

Review: To embark on the journey that is Proust's seven-book series takes a certain amount of commitment and, fittingly, time. I had decided from the outset that I would sample this first effort then, if I was swept away by the narrative, continue on the journey until I ran out of patience or ran out of books. I knew little of the subject of the series. It was recommended to me that I should try some Proust if I was keen on reading 'books of that type'. The 'type' they were referring to were contained on a list of 100 best books, which contained classics from the Mahabarata to Tristram Shandy. I'd been discussing the range of French literature - Sentimental Education, Father Goriot, Les Miserables. Readers who have enjoyed the likes of Goriot should find Swann's Way to their liking. The writing is wonderfully detailed without becoming laboured. The book is written from the point of view of a boy, or rather a man remembering his time as a boy, and the period in which his family included Swann in their social circle. The plot is located between Paris and Swann's country retreat, although these are of little importance as they merely act as a backdrop for Swann's various social circles. This being time where a person's contacts and behaviour would determine their standing in society, their reputation and the social engagements to which they were invited. While not as infuriatingly complex as the pomp and circumstance of Sentimental Education, the rituals of tea parties and conversation form a major strand of the book. Swann, evidently a bachelor of some means, commands everything one needs to get on in the social minefield: excellent contacts, fascinating conversation and an excellent grasp of culture. The problems begin for Swann when he falls in love with the wrong woman. The boy narrator prevails the reader with Swann's nosedive into hopeless infatuation with Odette, who turns out to be more, and less than he first thought. The style of narration works brilliantly. It acts as a filler for the reader, with the narrator's anecdotal description acting as background information that enables the reader to see the traps Swans has fallen, or is about to fall into. The anguish relayed though the pages was akin to watching through one's fingers - Don't go into the haunted house alone, snap out of it Swann. I found the social rituals in the book less frustrating than in books such as Father Goriot. Swann is more than aware that he is playing a game and the reader gains satisfaction knowing that he plays it well, often outstanding some of those who lay traps for him with a request for a delicate opinion - the wrong answer to which could mean being ostracised from society. It's at times a French Mapp and Lucia without the pointlessness. There is an end to Swann's patience, and it is quite a relief for both reader and Swann when he comes to his senses. Swann's Way is a likeable enough book. It plods along at a decent pace, the characters are detailed and the actions and dialogue are more natural than that of Flaubert's or Balzac's efforts. However, I wasn't drawn into the book as much as I'd hoped. I didn't look forward to my next opportunity to read it with the relish of a story that has really grabbed the imagination. Swann's Way was an enjoyable introduction to Proust's work, but I wasn't won over enough to embark on the rest of the series.