Swann's Way (ISBN 1572700920)

Hmmm....Will it get any better than this?:
So i finally made the commitment to reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time. I've been contemplating this for years, and this spring i have the time so i've excitedly decided to forge what will be a memorable relationship with the author and the text. But geez, am i DISAPPOINTED with the first "installment"!!! I'm usually an avid reader of European classics, and although i wasn't expecting Proust to be thrilling, i guess i didn't realize that the work was completely plotless. I have to stop and remind myself (lest i give up?) that i am reading for the full experience rather than instant gratification, so i'm going to doggedly push on, and read something "fun" like Waugh or Vonnegut between each of the 6 books of I.S.O.L.T... On a postive note, Proust's unique style allows the reader's mind to wander with the narrator, so i honestly can't say that i was "bored". It is also interesting that Proust is so often right on target about the human psyche and about society, when he, an invalid, was himself removed from it for much of his life. Finally, Swann's Way is, let's face it, a moderately thick book. Without plot, you'd think that it would be a slow and dragging read. However, his long sentences somehow propel the reader forward to the next interesting speculation or to the next social event, and once again, his style is such that we become involved in the character's life....what will be the next step in Swann and Odette's relationship? Although i have mixed feelings about the start of my Proustian journey, I console myself with his notions of time. The way we feel and think about something while we are in the midst of it may differ greatly from the way we feel and think about it once we are removed from it. Perspective is altered by distance (and memory, imagine that...). Perhaps once i finish the work in its entirety the pieces will all come together and there will be a cumulative gain. If nothing else, there will be a sense of accomplishment!

note well which translation you're buying:
Let me say first off that Amazon has mixed up the Proust translations. I am looking at the Kindle e-book edition of the Modern Library translation of Swann's Way, published in 2000, yet the "publisher's note" speaks of the newer translation by Lydia Davis, which Penguin published in the U.S. in 2003. (If this reader's review migrates to the paper editions, please ignore it.) I see that multiple versions of Swann's Way are available as Kindle e-books. Beware! All except this Modern Library edition are public-domain uploads of the original Scott Moncrieff translation, which is not nearly as good, nor as accurate, as the much-revised version edited by Kilmartin and Enright. (Or the Lydia Davis translation from Penguin.) Among those books offered right now as Kindle editions, buy only the Modern Library version with Proust looking soulful on the cover (well, he always looks soulful!) and a vertical band down the right side with the title. And here is my take on the dueling translations: The Fourteen-Minute Marcel Proust: Everyone's guide to the greatest novel ever written -- and again, note that it is a Kindle e-book. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The exquisite dissection of ordinary moments...:
*Swann's Way* is a difficult novel to recommend unreservedly. Not because it isn't a beautiful and affecting masterpiece, but because it's inevitably the sort of novel that--by its very nature--is not everyone's cup of tea. A novel that begins with a 60+ page riff on a man falling asleep and recalling the drama surrounding his mother's goodnight kiss may be enough to turn off even your most enthusiastic fan of one of Flaubert's potboilers. On the other hand, for anyone who appreciates the sensual, visual, and musical possibilities of language and the infinite psychological subtleties revealed in the gimlet-eyed scrutiny of self and others there are few--if any--novelists that top Proust or novels more spellbindingly beautiful than *Swann's Way.* The first of Proust's legendary six-volume epic, *In Search of Lost Time,* *Swann's Way* actually consists of three distinctly separate but closely linked stories--the narrator's famous recollection of his childhood; the tortured and scandalous love affair between Charles Swann and the courtesan Odette de Crecy; and the narrator's later schoolboy crush on Swann and Odette's willful daughter, Gilberte. In each section, Proust's analysis of the foibles, passions, and disappointments of his dramatis personae is so exact, so incisive there hardly seems anything left worth saying about the topics he turns his surgical eye and sets his pen to dissect. His observation of people in society--their vanity, snobbishness, and petty cruelty--are wickedly amusing, devastatingly accurate, and, on rarer occasions, touching. No better account of the vicissitudes, illusions, and degradations of love exists in all of literature than the section entitled *Swann in Love.* Anyone who's ever been in love will instantly recognize himself with wry amusement and cringing embarrassment in Swann's agonizing travails. The ability to "fool" ourselves into thinking that what we love--whether a person, place, or time--lies somewhere "out there" as opposed to within ourselves is the main theme of the final section, *Place-Names. The Name* but it's also one that permeates the entire book. "The memory of a particular image is but the regret for a particular moment." In a series of novels that goes under the general title *In Search of Lost Time* this epigram is indicative of the bittersweet and paradoxical nature of Proust's project--the attempt to find in memory and to recapture in literature what is gone forever even if it never existed apart from our consciousness in the first place.

Swann's Way:
The product and the narration is very well done. Unfortunately, I found that Proust is just not for me.

A book about life:
Swann's Way is the ax that chops into your frozen sea by plunging and penetrating deep into your soul. Proust's mellifluous prose flows into you and you flow into it and the outcome is a intimate connection with the characters in the book, the narrator, and the author. It is nothing short of a miracle.