Finis

Page: n/a
Pages read since last post: 770
Days reading Proust: 112 (23,7,44,9,23,3,3)
Books read since last post: 3 (E.Gibbon, Decline and Fall Vol 3, A. Memmi, The colonizer and the colonized, :L.Sciascia, The Day of the Owl)

In brief: I think the whole thing tails off a bit. Cap/Fug is a strangely contrasting book, where we have a long dull section where nothing happens, except that the narrator is a colossal weirdo - which is fair enough. This followed by an absurd plot packed short(er) section in The Fugitive, which are a little silly (Saint Loup, really! Sounds like wish fulfilment to me), and is reminiscent of nothing more than one of the dodgy final scenes in Shakespeare where every character conveniently gets married off within a small pool of other characters.

This all makes Time Regained feel like a coda, and it is, and some of it is excellent. The final turn of the wheel for Charlus degrades him to the figure of pity that one can see growing in previous volumes. Similarly, the fate of many of the protagonists is fascinating. However, as with the earlier inconsistencies, the whole thing doesn't quite work. There is a very rapid passage of time in volume six (by my calculations we cannot be earlier than a notional 1930, and the narrator no younger than his early forties), which is created by a lengthy sanatorium visit by the narrator, and his observations of the turn of the wheel of generations is well observed, but a little too indiscriminate. I know he is odd, but he might have corresponded with some of these people in the intervening period and know what they were doing; equally, while all age, this seems to happen to everyone - none of whom he recognises, but people don't all change that much in (max) 16 years. This overstylisation to my mind marrs the major final scenes, though there is much to treasure.

I'll post more later on major themes, but want to flag my irritation with c. p.200 - 280, where he bangs on about his art. It doesn't belong here, but rather in an academic study. However, I would suggest he models it on Gibbon, whose final volume of his original trilogy confirms them as masterpieces of erudition for their time, but eloquence for today, rather than Memmi's work on Tunisia which has dated horribly and is pretentious leftist intellectual claptrap. Finally, those seeking an antidote to Proust could do much worse than the Day of the Owl, which is short, action packed and powerful. If anything, it could be said to have been overcut, not something we can ever accuse Marcel of.