Waterstones In Search of Lost Time: Volume 5

Author: Justerman

Rating: 5

Review: There are three qualities to comment upon: the complete novel, the translation, and the kindle specifics. I'm going to post this review for all six volumes of the Prendergast series. If you've read it elsewhere, I apologise. I'd guess that my most helpful remarks will be about the kindle implementation. I'll cover all six books of this Prendergast edition. There is nothing in the general formatting to deter purchase of the kindle version. The complete novel is so large and there are so many characters that X-Ray would have been good. This series doesn't have it. But each volume does have a synopsis at the end which lists the elements of the narrative (for example “Swann's first meeting with Odette”; “Odette's vulgarity”), together with the page number. At the time of writing (June 2015), the usefulness of this feature varies from volume to volume. Its value is greatest in “In the shadow of young girls”, “The Guermantes Way”, and “The Prisoner and the Fugitive”. In all three the page number is a link, enabling one to jump directly to the page referenced. If, like me, you want to re-read passages, this feature is excellent. In “The Way by Swann's” and “Finding time again” the page numbers don't link directly to the referenced passages: you have to Go To the page number. Finally “Sodom and Gomorrah” doesn't contain page numbers, so those quoted in the Synopsis are almost useless. I assume that this is a production error, and I've informed Amazon. I've read that the Kilmartin/Enright edition has an index of place names and proper names and a thematic index, but I've no idea how well these are implemented on the kindle. I enjoyed the novel, but it has its weaknesses: the long sentences are quite often hard to comprehend without re-reading, and some passages are over-long. So I wouldn't expect everyone to enjoy it. You just have to try it. I opted to spend about £30 on the Predergast series, after starting the free (for kindle) Scott Moncrieff edition. I could have lived with the Scott Moncrieff but I just preferred a more modern text. I'm not able to compare the Prendergast series translations with Kilmartin and Enright's. Occasionally I wanted to compare the translation with Proust's French. This was hampered by the Prendergast series being based on the 1987 Pléiade edition, which is not in the public domain and so too expensive for me. There's an informative “General Editor's Preface” at the beginning of “The Way by Swann's”. I'd expect it would be included within the free sample available for kindle.

Author: R. S. Stanier

Rating: 2

Review: The narrator of 'In Search of Lost Time', be that Proust himself or a persona, reaches an apogee of annoyingness in this volume. He is obsessed with Albertine, so obsessed that her coming to live with him is not enough. He must know her every move and prevent her meeting any other woman lest she run off in a lesbian relationship, which would be the worst thing of all time. And yet when she submissively returns to him, he then bangs on about how sorry he is that she's coming back, because he will now not to be able to be free to ogle other 17 year olds (or younger) and have his way with them. It is a deeply lesbian-phobic book (hard to describe it as homophobic, when same sex male relationships are viewed so positively.) It is worse than that in that, when Albertine leaves, the narrator consoles himself with a young girl, paying her 500 francs for an unspecified sexual act before letting her go, and is not condemned for doing so. Rather, when the girl's parents take him to court, the judge quietly tells him afterwards just to be more discreet about it. Infamously, people say you have to read Proust's characters through the other gender. Hence, the Albertine affair is apparently based on Proust's relationship with his chauffeur Alfred. But this just makes the book as it stands wildly unconvincing, as it therefore assumes that female gay characters are as rampantly promiscuous as men, among many other problems. People bang on about Proust's extraordinary psychological insight. This is a bit of a flaw, it seems to me. And, boy, this book is repetitive. "I'm bored with Albertine. She goes out. I'm jealous and miserable. I contrive a way to get her back. She writes to tell me she's coming back. I regret her coming back. I'm bored she's with me again. Albertine goes out. I'm jealous..." repeat for 200 pages, in paragraphs that typically last five pages or more. Even when she finally leaves, the narrator spends hundreds of pages analysing whether his paranoia was justified. "I was bored with her. She did go out. I was jealous and miserable..." The Baron de Charlus plot is rather more satisfying, and the plot finally gets going in the last forty pages of Volume Six. But by this time, it's hard to remember the earlier characters because you've had 500 pages of obsessing with Albertine: did or didn't she have sex with Andree/ Lea/ AN Other? There are the occasional funny moments, but no more than one every hundred pages; don't believe a flyleaf which talks about how witty Proust is. Basically, it's hard to enjoy spending so much time in the company of such a psychologically flawed, monstrously possessive, unpleasant narrator who finds human relationships essentially a miserable experience. Many people talk about the brilliance of Proust's observations about human life because of their universality; in the realm of human relationships, however, his perception certainly does not accord with mine.