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Pages read since last post: 417
Episodes of Transformers watched: 8
Polished off TGW a couple of days ago. Found it hard going at first, then picked up when he leaves Paris, then zipping along until the interminable salon scene where the author seems to assume an encyclopaedic knowledge of European aristocracy (yes Will, I'm looking at you).
If it's a device to demonstrate the shallow, vapid emptiness of said aristocracy then, well, job done M. Proust.
Fortunately the last forty or so pages with their hilarious interview with Charlus made up for it and actually made me chuckle at a mixture of the narrator's naivete and Charlus' impossibility.
Have had a breather after finishing vol.3 but am v anxious to get going with vol.4 if only because of the title. Truly I am the lowest common denominator of Proust readers.
Halfway through Imperium by Ryszard Kapuściński, a trawl around the USSR before the fall of the iron curtain. Interesting stuff, though it does make me want to invest in a really good atlas. Although that might be tricky as no doubt a lot of the places he talks about are now part of another country/independent/smoking craters in the ground.
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4 comments:
Smug bastard. I'm glad you have discovered Kapuściński (and more impressed that you have discovered the accent buttons on the keyboard). I have yet to move. BUt I'm only 200 pages away from the end of the fifth vol of Gibbon. GW awaits at the weekend.
Damn you M. Smith - joining in late yet stealing a march on the rest of us. Well done though! Completely agree about the interminable salon scene, and also that the hilarity of Charlus makes up for it.
Am currently 400 pages in myself. Last night I read the really quite moving and horrific section in which the narrator's grandmother dies. Fortunately Proust doesn't completely abandon his sense of humour, and deals out a dose of the blackest comedy when the Duc de Guermantes arrives and insists on following correct social protocol to the letter, seemingly oblivious to the family tragedy. Splendid upper-class tomfoolery.
It's funny, I end up feeling almost nostalgic for the awful characters when I'm not reading it. I'm sure that's not what's meant to happen!
I feel similarly nostalgic for Alexis' blogs - particularly since he is clearly not reading it at the moment and should confess as much.
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