"Swann's Way"

The cookie that launched
4000+ pages (not a joke)

My book group decided to tackle Proust's seven-volume A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, usually translated as "In Search of Lost Time," over the next two years. The idea is to space out the reading and schedule multi-month breaks between volumes so we have time to read other things in the meantime. For my part, I find the optimism required to schedule anything out that far in advance quite admirable, and there's no way I'd read this work on my own, so I decided to join in and see what the draw is...and, of course, see how the original compares to Monty Python's classic All-England Summarize Proust Competition.

The first sections, frankly, are like watching paint dry. The unnamed narrator reminisces about his childhood, though not its events – nothing so narrative-driven! – but rather fragments of memories, half-forgotten feelings, and similar. He spends 10 pages talking about eating a madeleine (the cookie in the cover art, I believe), 15 or 20 on the way church steeples in a neighboring town look, and dozens more remembering how he agonized each night, wondering if his mother would come kiss him goodnight before going to bed. There is surely beautiful language and humor to be found, but the overall pace is so slow and the sentences so long that I could only read about a dozen pages before putting it down for the day.

It takes about 250 pages to get to the third major section of the volume, Swann in Love, and this is where everything changes. Now we have characters and conversations and events (i.e. plot) that actually make sense in context, dialogue on par with Tolstoy, the societal shenanigans of Austen or Dickens combined with the social commentary of James Joyce, and above all the highs and lows and sense of inevitability of Swann's love affair.

Swann and Odette are ill-matched from the start. Swann is an impeccably educated intellectual, a socialite welcome in every court who knows all the best families, and charmingly modest (for a snob). Odette is unrefined, probably a courtesan, not Swann's usual type (as he puts it) – and yet Swann sees in her a certain nobility and slowly comes to love her, though it's always tied back to his appreciation for art: her face is like the religious paintings he and his friends admire; the depth of feeling she instills is like a certain "little phrase" of music, at once hopeful and nostalgic.

Of course, it can't last. Interest inflamed becomes passion, then obsession, and eventually an all-consuming jealousy. The lovers' feelings twist and smoke and burn out into ashes – and yet the relationship remains, long after they've forgotten why it began in the first place. Swann's is a sort of willful, lovesick despair, where he prefers to cling to what's familiar and prolong his suffering. But is Odette truly familiar? And for her part, doesn't she prefer the image she had of Swann before their relationship to the complicated, flesh-and-blood man who wants to possess her in a way she can't allow? Do we ever truly know the beloved object or are we in some sense in love with our own idea of the other, and ultimately with our own self?

Verdict: The first volume of Proust's work describes the vapidity of high society, the conflict between inner self and what's presented to the world, uncontrollable passion, and more. There are certainly rewards to be had here; just realize what you're getting into before starting this work. Would I have enjoyed Swann in Love without taking weeks to get used to Proust's language? I'm honestly not sure, but ultimately I'm glad I did.