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A review by michaelgardner
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
5.0
The unreachable world. Things that are denied us either by circumstance, society, age, or lack. We conjure forth that which we believe we need, is ours to have, and is deserved. This urge to personalize that which is not ours, whether it is based in reality or not, is brought forth in this novel.
A young boy needing to have one last moment at the end of the day with his mother; a kiss before bed, becomes the crutch on which the remainder of this story rests. It is a parable of need, an expectation germinated from the seed of attachment and obsession. As the narrator recalls his days as a boy in Combray, and even further back: through an omniscient narrative that begins prior to his birth, he examines Swann’s way, his life. His world, the society he travels with, and the girl Odette he meets, and through whom his love, his want, is objectified deeply, and is explored as a disease of attachment that pains Swann. This effects his world, and the experience others have of him. Proust illustrates this in a psychological rendering that envelopes the reader, giving you the experience in total. This book is the experience of obsession; objectively in the very nature of the writing, and subjectively in the narrative sweeping through years and decades, people and events, music and paintings, relationships and longing, and madeleines.
I love this translation, and hope Lydia Davis would continue through the series.
A young boy needing to have one last moment at the end of the day with his mother; a kiss before bed, becomes the crutch on which the remainder of this story rests. It is a parable of need, an expectation germinated from the seed of attachment and obsession. As the narrator recalls his days as a boy in Combray, and even further back: through an omniscient narrative that begins prior to his birth, he examines Swann’s way, his life. His world, the society he travels with, and the girl Odette he meets, and through whom his love, his want, is objectified deeply, and is explored as a disease of attachment that pains Swann. This effects his world, and the experience others have of him. Proust illustrates this in a psychological rendering that envelopes the reader, giving you the experience in total. This book is the experience of obsession; objectively in the very nature of the writing, and subjectively in the narrative sweeping through years and decades, people and events, music and paintings, relationships and longing, and madeleines.
I love this translation, and hope Lydia Davis would continue through the series.