The Fourteen-Minute Marcel Proust: Everyone's Guide to ...

in search of Proust:
I started reading "Swann's Way" on at least two occasions before a friend challenged me to join him in reading the whole of "Remembrance of Things Past," as Proust's masterpiece was then known. We got through it in about a year. I read it again--and out loud!--to my wife over the course of two winters. Years later, when Penguin came out with a new translation, I knew I'd have to read the book again, and this time I blogged online about the experience. Between books of the novel, I read everything published about Proust in English as well as his housekeeper's memoir in French. Now I've put my blog entries into print (well--digital print) for anyone who'd like to tackle the novel as I did most recently, reading it from beginning to end. My blog is just under 8,000 words, so it won't take long. Though it was the "Penguin Proust" that inspired the entries, they'll work for the more traditional translation as well. (I read the latest version of that, as edited by Enright, after I finished the Penguin Proust, for my fourth complete reading of "In Search of Lost Time".) Blue skies! -- Dan Ford