About this title: Readers and reviewers in the United Kingdom have hailed the new translations of Proust as a major literary event. Soon to appear in the United States, "Swannas Way," along with the second volume of "In Search of Lost Time," "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower," will introduce a new century of American readers to the literary riches of Proust. These superb editionsathe first completely new translation of Proustas novel since the 1920sabring us a more comic and lucid Proust than English readers have previously been able to enjoy.
"In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower" is a spectacular ...
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Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Deluxe Penguin Classics
Date Published: 2005-01-25
ISBN-13:9780143039075ISBN:0143039075
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780143039075. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780143039075ISBN:0143039075
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking, NY
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780670032778ISBN:0670032778
Description: Near Fine in Fine dust jacket. 0670032778. Translated from the French with an introduction and notes by James Grieve. First printing thus. Remainder mark on bottom edge, else fine in a fine dust jacket. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Allen Lane Penguin Books, London
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780713996050ISBN:0713996056
Description: Very Good- Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) Trade paperback Uncorrected Proof Copy of the new Penguin Proust translation of Remembrance of Things Past, xv + 554 pages; spine gently creased, light soiling of covers and edges. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780143039075ISBN:0143039075
Description: Acceptable. Former Library Book and/or book has writing/highlighting * If you can deal with the writing/markings, this is a great deal! * read more
Description: Good. Normal wear-cover corners and edges slightly bent, ink mark on page edges, page edges slightly dirty With CD! 100% Money Back Guarantee. read more
Edition: Reprint
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: PENGUIN GROUP
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780143039075ISBN:0143039075
Description: "A triumph...will bring this inexhaustible artwork to new audiences throughout the English-speaking world. "--Malcolm Bowie, "Sunday Telegraph. " read more
"sorry, david. this book is better than swanns way. to the extent that i may have to go back and give swanns way three stars so that when i give this book four stars it doesnt make them equals, and, having four books to go, i want to leave room for a five-star anticipation. the first half of swanns way had me understanding what people did not like about proust. there was a lot of me hating on the narrator and gacking over his precious daintiness. this one, though, phoar. it is true it took me a long time to read it, and it was partly because the lulling nature of his prose would cause me to drift off into my own batch of memories and i would realize that three subway stops had gone by, or ten minutes of my break had passed, or i was asleep (that happened a few times, not because it was boring, but because his style is so much like a gentle boat on a lazy stream and its all memory and dreamy and suddenly i am actually dreaming. thats pretty powerful) and then, i realized my copy was defective, and eight pages were blank! thats like two sentences - gone! so i had to get a new copy and transfer all my bookmarks, marking passages i liked, such as "In reality, there is in love a permanent strain of suffering which happiness neutralises, makes potential only, postpones, but which may at any moment become, what it would long since have been had we not obtained what we wanted, excruciating." which is just gorgeous. and there is so much like that in this book - so much delightfully neurotic stewing and examining every delicate memory of first, and second, love. marcel is a thinkier prufrock waiting and waiting and thinking and hesitating and eventually pouncing, but like my cat when shes just playing with me to please me; you can tell her heart is elsewhere. but everyone, not just you, david, said this book was a valley in between the literary heights of swanns way and guermantes way, but i thought it was stunning. i am taking a proust-break for a moment,maybe two or three books worth, because i can see myself getting wholly immersed in the proustiverse and becoming too introspective and examining the minutia of life and love and disappointments and thats something you really want to space out and not digest all at once, for the sanitys sake. but then i suspect i will not be able to stop until the bitter end. with brians (deleted) aborted wedding scene."
"I have just discovered the finest form of sleeping aid for insomniacs.
I always imagined what it would be like when I am older and therefore reasonably excused, from falling asleep and snoring loudly during act 1 of a pathetically unpromising tract of theatre, blissfully unaware of my companion's annoyance, or indeed anyone else within earshot whose irritated and vehement stares are no doubt willing poisonous arrows to pierce the flesh of my aged skin. Or indeed the performers themselves, who now are also aware and therefore interrupted of thought and task at hand by my rude protestations. But I fear I am now dribbling like the old man whose relaxed and weak neck muscles have positioned his head in an angulated way to form a narrow gap between shoulder and head, and blah, blah, blah.
Well I imagine no more. Proust is without doubt the best benzodiazepine available"
"I find this volume much more difficult to slog through than the first. While young Proust is childishly charming in his descriptions of his family life and yearning for the rest of the world, young adult Proust (or adult-how old is he, anyway?) is a self-absorbed ass.
His obsessions with various women get tiring-I'm sure for the women as well as the reader. It's not any particular woman that he's so interested in, though his attention does become fixated on a couple, but the idea of Woman. He's a dog in heat, driven to distraction by every milk maid he glimpses from a mile away through the fog. And he's never happy; the moment he gains what he wants, he doesn't want it anymore. (This also includes things such as an evening at the opera and a trip to Balbec.)
What's worse is that he makes universal pronouncements about the nature of love based on his particular experiences. He goes so far as to say that love has nothing to do with the person who is loved, but is entirely about the elevated state of mind that they can generate. This is his way of justifying the fact that despite his extreme snobbishness, he lusts after commoners. I understand his need for self-delusion, considering that the only women interested in him are the whores he sells his great-aunt's furniture to pay, but does he need to try to delude the rest of us, too?
Proust's falseness is clearer in this volume. For example, he and his friend Saint-Loup hear there is a painter sitting near them at a restaurant and they immediately pretend to be admirers of his work in order to meet him, just because they are told he is "famous." Proust is constantly telling of people at the hotel who are high-class snobs who won't talk to anyone-and then they go out of their way to be friendly to him. Not that he's bragging or anything...
He also dissembles in order to try to gain the attention of girls. Desperately going out of his way to be introduced to the "gang of girls" he's been stalking for days, he hangs back and looks at antiques when his painter acquaintance tries to introduce him-and then he's upset at the painter for not pushing the issue. Late, he pretends to be in love with Albertine's friend Andrée to make her jealous.
The anti-Semitism of his class and time period is out in force in this volume, with the addition of his embarrassing Jewish friend Bloch, Albertine's taken-for-granted dislike of Jews, and multiple mentions of the Dreyfus Affair. This was a revelation to me, and I keep expecting someone in the book to comment on it (maybe his grandmother?), but everyone seems to think it's normal.
I was briefly heartened by the change of setting when he traveled to Balbec. Observations of the new surroundings and of his fellow guests at the hotel pulled him out of his self-pitying navel-gazing for a time.
An especially interesting bit: his obsession with the "gang of girls" was reminiscent of Lolita. His observations about the beguiling and transitory nature of adolescence-and even Albertine's somewhat vulgar enthusiasm-make me think that Nabokov must have read this. Proust even calls the girls "nymphs" on multiple occasions.
All in all, I don't think I would recommend this volume. The first was very compelling, especially the strikingly different point of view of Swann in Love, but this just seems like a continuation of some of the worst characteristics of the third part of that volume. Maybe this is its Matrix Reloaded-a transition volume-and the next will be better. Here's hoping"
"Absolutely fantastic. Even better than the first. In a way, it more completely captures what I perceive to be the essence of this series, the relationship between memory and experience, and all the brilliant observations of human behavior amidst elite and middle class French society. His observations on high society in Balbec, those fancy folks who deliberately choose not to go to Paris as they would not be viewed as being truly high class there, yet are considered top dogs in Balbec. The introduction of the character of Saint Loup and the Baron de Charlus, both brilliantly desrcibed. And of course, his searingly obsessive portaits of the young girls of the esplanade, including Albertine, a character I am excited to read more about in later books. I vacillated between thinking he was totally pervy and completely brilliant in his observations of these girls. When a person speaks of their feelings in a completely honest and real and detail-rich way, even the sickest observations can appear to seem reasonable and acceptable. Now I don't even remember if this happened in the first or second novel, but early on, when he sees La Berma in that play and is disappointed, I re-read that whole section because it was so true to the sensation of being disappointed in something one has built up so many high hopes for, in terms of art.
this series seems like a seamless novel of 4000 pages as opposed to 7 different books, truly unlike anything I have ever read, not quite a novel, not just essays, but totally real and insanely brilliant. cannot wait to read the next one."
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