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Within a Budding Grove
- Narrated by: John Rowe
- Length: 23 hrs and 2 mins
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For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letter, and conversations – and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.
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Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912 and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents.
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Samuel Pickwick, founder and chairman of the Pickwick Club, engages three fellow members to accompany him on a journey. By coach they’ll travel to the outreaches of London to explore, observe, and report back on the quaint wonders of the English countryside. What transpires is a picaresque romp of misadventures, hair-raising challenges, and romantic follies entangling the fates of a riot of colorful characters - a passel of villains, spinsters, poets, and sportsmen - and the unworldly Pickwick himself, who has much to learn about life outside his gentleman’s club.
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Swann's Way
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Story
Swann’s Way is the first of seven volumes in Remembrance of Things Past. It sets the scene with the narrator’s memories being famously provoked by the taste of that little cake, the madeleine, accompanied by a cup of lime-flowered tea. It is an unmatched portrait of fin-de-siècle France.
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Not a book one reads but inhabits & floats through
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Overall
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Story
Featuring a fictional version of himself - 'Marcel' - and a host of friends, acquaintances, and lovers, In Search of Lost Time is Proust's search for the key to the mysteries of memory, time, and consciousness. As he recalls his childhood days, the sad affair of Charles Swann and Odette de Crecy, his transition to manhood, the tortures of love and the ravages of war, he realises that the simplest of discoveries can lead to astonishing possibilities.
-
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Outstanding book, superb narration
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A nice petite primer on Proust
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By: Alain de Botton
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The Magic Mountain
- By: Thomas Mann
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Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912 and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents.
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It is a June day in London in 1923, and the lovely Clarissa Dalloway is having a party. Whom will she see? Her friend Peter, back from India, who has never really stopped loving her? What about Sally, with whom Clarissa had her life’s happiest moment? Meanwhile, the shell-shocked Septimus Smith is struggling with his life on the same London day.
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WONDERFUL NARRATIONS!
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Notes from the Underground
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A predecessor to such monumental works such as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Notes From Underground represents a turning point in Dostoyevsky's writing towards the more political side.
In this work, we follow the unnamed narrator of the story, who, disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives, withdraws from that society into the underground.
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Awful hero, great narrator
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David Copperfield
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Based in part on Dickens's own life, it is the story of a young man's journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among its gloriously vivid cast of characters, he e.ncounters his tyrannical stepfather, Mr. Murdstone; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble yet treacherous Uriah Heep; the frivolous, enchanting Dora; and one of literature's great comic creations, the magnificently impecunious Mr. Micawber.
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"I am born."
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Written initially in French, later translated by the author into English, Molloy is the first book in Dublin-born Samuel Beckett's trilogy. It was published shortly after WWII and marked a new, mature writing style, which was to dominate the remainder of his working life. Molloy is less a novel than a set of two monologues narrated by Molloy and his pursuer, Moran.
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Nauseating, boring, hilarious, and magnificent
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To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf’s arresting analysis of domestic family life, centering on the Ramseys and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland in the early 1900s. Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut), who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf in the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
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A book that will challenge you to think.
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The Aeneid
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The publication of a new translation by Fagles is a literary event. His translations of both the Iliad and Odyssey have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and have become the standard translations of our era. Now, with this stunning modern verse translation, Fagles has reintroduced Virgil's Aeneid to a whole new generation, and completed the classical triptych at the heart of Western civilization.
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Good but the chapters aren't IN ORDER
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The Complete Essays of Montaigne
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“A faithful translation is rare; a translation which preserves intact the original text is very rare; a perfect translation of Montaigne appears impossible. Yet Donald Frame has realized this feat. One does not seem to be reading a translation, so smooth and easy is the style; at each moment, one seems to be listening to Montaigne himself - the freshness of his ideas, the unexpected choice of words. Frame has kept everything.” (Andre Maurois, The New York Times Book Review)
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Stands next to the Bible and M.A.'s Meditations
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By: Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, and others
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The Portrait of a Lady
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Couldn't get past the terrible American accents.
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The Stand
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Story
This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen.
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My First Completed Stephen King Novel
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By: Stephen King
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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
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- Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
France, 1714: In a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever - and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
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Prose style not to my liking
- By C.V. Cox on 10-18-20
By: V. E. Schwab
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The Night Circus
- A Novel
- By: Erin Morgenstern
- Narrated by: Jim Dale
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway - a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors.
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Dreamlike Experience to Savor
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By: Erin Morgenstern
Publisher's summary
In the second volume of Proust's great novel, the narrator emerges as an actor in the drama of his own life. Swann has now dwindled into a husband for his former mistress, Odette, and their daughter, Gilberte, becomes the adolescent narrator's playmate and tantalising love object.
We move from Paris to the seaside town of Balbec, from ritualised social performances to midsummer spontaneity and from Gilberte to her successor, Albertine.
In Balbec, the narrator is befriended by the painter Elstir who introduces him both to the craft of painting and to the mysterious 'little band' of girls. An artistic education is thus intricately interwoven with a journey of sexual self-discovery.
This is now the entire audiobook, not in two parts.
Related to this topic
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Swann's Way
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- Narrated by: Neville Jason
- Length: 21 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Swann’s Way is the first of seven volumes in Remembrance of Things Past. It sets the scene with the narrator’s memories being famously provoked by the taste of that little cake, the madeleine, accompanied by a cup of lime-flowered tea. It is an unmatched portrait of fin-de-siècle France.
-
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Not a book one reads but inhabits & floats through
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The Bostonians
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From Boston's social underworld emerges Verena Tarrant, a girl with extraordinary oratorical gifts, which she deploys in tawdry meeting-houses on behalf of "the sisterhood of women." She acquires two admirers of a very different stamp: Olive Chancellor, devotee of radical causes and marked out for tragedy; and Basil Ransom, a veteran of the Civil War who holds rigid views concerning society and women's place therein. Is the lovely, lighthearted Verena made for public movements or private passions?
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Fantastic reading!
- By FranceyO on 07-15-11
By: Henry James
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Night and Day
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Performance
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Story
Written before she began her experiments in the writing of fiction, Virginia Woolf's second novel, Night and Day, is a story about a group of young people trying to discover what it means to fall in love. It asks all the big questions: What does it mean to fall in love? Does marriage grant happiness? What is happiness? Night and Day is a conventional novel; however, it maps out for us the world of Virginia Woolf in its wondrous prose: For her it was the beginning, leading on to a prolonged engagement with her search for the means to express the "inner life".
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"After all, what is love?"
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By: Virginia Woolf
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The Custom of the Country
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Edith Wharton stands among the finest writers of early 20th-century America. In The Custom of the Country, Wharton’s scathing social commentary is on full display through the beautiful and manipulative Undine Spragg. When Undine convinces her nouveau riche parents to move to New York, she quickly injects herself into high society. But even a well-to-do husband isn’t enough for Undine, whose overwhelming lust for wealth proves to be her undoing.
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Cannot recommend a better narrator!
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The Wings of the Dove
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Milly Theale is a young, beautiful, and fabulously wealthy American. When she arrives in London and meets the equally beautiful but impoverished Kate Croy, they form an intimate friendship. But nothing is as it seems: materialism, romance, self-delusion, and ultimately fatal illness insidiously contaminate the glamorous social whirl.
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Not an easy read but SO worth it!
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David Copperfield
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Between his work on the 2014 Audible Audiobook of the Year, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A Novel, and his performance of Classic Love Poems, narrator Richard Armitage ( The Hobbit, Hannibal) has quickly become a listener favorite. Now, in this defining performance of Charles Dickens' classic David Copperfield, Armitage lends his unique voice and interpretation, truly inhabiting each character and bringing real energy to the life of one of Dickens' most famous characters.
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A PERFECT narration of an English classic!
- By Wayne on 09-03-17
By: Charles Dickens
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Swann's Way
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- Length: 21 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Swann’s Way is the first of seven volumes in Remembrance of Things Past. It sets the scene with the narrator’s memories being famously provoked by the taste of that little cake, the madeleine, accompanied by a cup of lime-flowered tea. It is an unmatched portrait of fin-de-siècle France.
-
-
Not a book one reads but inhabits & floats through
- By Darwin8u on 02-24-13
By: Marcel Proust
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The Bostonians
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
From Boston's social underworld emerges Verena Tarrant, a girl with extraordinary oratorical gifts, which she deploys in tawdry meeting-houses on behalf of "the sisterhood of women." She acquires two admirers of a very different stamp: Olive Chancellor, devotee of radical causes and marked out for tragedy; and Basil Ransom, a veteran of the Civil War who holds rigid views concerning society and women's place therein. Is the lovely, lighthearted Verena made for public movements or private passions?
-
-
Fantastic reading!
- By FranceyO on 07-15-11
By: Henry James
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Night and Day
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Written before she began her experiments in the writing of fiction, Virginia Woolf's second novel, Night and Day, is a story about a group of young people trying to discover what it means to fall in love. It asks all the big questions: What does it mean to fall in love? Does marriage grant happiness? What is happiness? Night and Day is a conventional novel; however, it maps out for us the world of Virginia Woolf in its wondrous prose: For her it was the beginning, leading on to a prolonged engagement with her search for the means to express the "inner life".
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"After all, what is love?"
- By Eman Abd Allah on 12-13-16
By: Virginia Woolf
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The Custom of the Country
- By: Edith Wharton
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Edith Wharton stands among the finest writers of early 20th-century America. In The Custom of the Country, Wharton’s scathing social commentary is on full display through the beautiful and manipulative Undine Spragg. When Undine convinces her nouveau riche parents to move to New York, she quickly injects herself into high society. But even a well-to-do husband isn’t enough for Undine, whose overwhelming lust for wealth proves to be her undoing.
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Cannot recommend a better narrator!
- By Esther on 07-29-12
By: Edith Wharton
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The Wings of the Dove
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 22 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Milly Theale is a young, beautiful, and fabulously wealthy American. When she arrives in London and meets the equally beautiful but impoverished Kate Croy, they form an intimate friendship. But nothing is as it seems: materialism, romance, self-delusion, and ultimately fatal illness insidiously contaminate the glamorous social whirl.
-
-
Not an easy read but SO worth it!
- By Julie Gray on 10-31-17
By: Henry James
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David Copperfield
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Overall
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Performance
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Between his work on the 2014 Audible Audiobook of the Year, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A Novel, and his performance of Classic Love Poems, narrator Richard Armitage ( The Hobbit, Hannibal) has quickly become a listener favorite. Now, in this defining performance of Charles Dickens' classic David Copperfield, Armitage lends his unique voice and interpretation, truly inhabiting each character and bringing real energy to the life of one of Dickens' most famous characters.
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A PERFECT narration of an English classic!
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The Man Without Qualities
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In 1913, the Viennese aristocracy is gathering to celebrate the 17th jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef, even as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is collapsing and the rest of Vienna is showing signs of rebellion. At the centre of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: a veteran, a seducer and a scientist, yet also a man 'without qualities' and therefore a brilliant and detached observer of his changing world.
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An unmatched intellectual epic
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The Age of Innocence
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Countess Ellen Olenska, separated from her European husband, returns to old New York society. She bears with her an independence and an awareness of life which stirs the educated sensitivity of the charming Newland Archer, engaged to be married to her cousin, May Welland. Though he accepts the society's standards and rules he is acutely aware of their limitations. He knows May will assure him a conventional future but Ellen, scandalously separated from her husband, forces Archer to question his values and beliefs.
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Narrated to Perfection
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A stunningly beautiful youth and the city of Venice set the stage for Thomas Mann’s introspective examination of erotic love and philosophical wisdom.
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A problem with the narration
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The Voyage Out
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The Voyage Out is Virginia Woolf's haunting tale about a naïve young woman's sea voyage from London to a small resort on the South American coast. In symbolic, lyrical, and intoxicating prose, her outward journey begins to mirror her internal voyage into adulthood as she searches for her personal identity, grapples with love, and learns how to face life intellectually and emotionally. Its wit and exquisiteness, and its profound depth and insight into humanity, will capture the imagination of the listener.
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Lovely
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Dombey and Son
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 36 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In this carefully crafted novel, Dickens reveals the complexity of London society in the enterprising 1840s as he takes the listener into the business firm and home of one of its most representative patriarchs, Paul Dombey.
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Perfect pair
- By Philip on 03-25-08
By: Charles Dickens
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Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
- A Novel
- By: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Jull Costa Margaret - translator, Robin Patterson - translator
- Narrated by: Ramon De Ocampo
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Machado de Assis’ classic novel, the precursor of Latin American fiction, is finally rendered as a stunningly relevant work for 21st-century audiences. In eloquent, contemporary prose, Costa and Patterson breathe new life into the dynamic character of Brás Cubas and reveal the vivid, tempestuous Rio de Janeiro of his time. The recently deceased Cubas narrates his life story, admitting glibly: “I am not so much a writer who has died, as a dead man who has decided to write.”
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Manic expressive
- By Wallis Leslie on 06-13-24
By: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, and others
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Villette
- By: Charlotte Brontë
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 22 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Hailed as Charlotte Brontë’s “finest novel” by Virginia Woolf, Villette is the timeless semi-autobiographical tale of Lucy Snowe. Left with no family and no money, Lucy goes against her own timid nature and travels to the small city of Villette, France, where she becomes a school teacher in Madame Beck’s school for girls. During her stay, she falls in love—twice—and discovers an independent, inner strength rarely seen in women of her time.
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The Divine Ms. Porter delivers as always
- By peachnmario on 03-17-15
By: Charlotte Brontë
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3 Classic Novels
- Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Mansfield Park
- By: Jane Austen
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Giuliano, The Spire
- Length: 36 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to the world of Jane Austen, one of the most beloved authors in the English language. Austen's works are known for their wit, social commentary, and romantic storylines that have captivated readers for generations.
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Classic Novels are the best.
- By Maureen Hart on 09-07-23
By: Jane Austen
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The Professor
- By: Charlotte Brontë
- Narrated by: James Wilby
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The Professor is Charlotte Brontë's first novel albeit the last to have been published. Edited and distributed by Arthur Bell Nicholls, two years after Brontë's death, it is based on her experiences of living as a language student in Brussels. The Professor follows the career and love affairs of William Crimsworth, a reserved but compassionate aristocrat who has been ostracised by his family and left penniless.
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Beautiful
- By ilene on 12-26-16
By: Charlotte Brontë
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The House of the Seven Gables
- By: Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In a sleepy little New England village stands a dark, weather-beaten, many-gabled house. This brooding mansion is haunted by a centuries-old curse that casts the shadow of ancestral sin upon the last four members of the distinctive Pyncheon family of Salem.
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A Classic Thriller
- By E. Pearson on 12-03-10
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The Mill on the Floss
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Laura Paton
- Length: 20 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Maggie Tulliver has two lovers: Philip Wakem, son of her father’s enemy, and Stephen Guest, already promised to her cousin. But the love she wants most in the world is that of her brother Tom. Maggie’s struggle against her passionate and sensual nature leads her to a deeper understanding and to eventual tragedy
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Great compassion
- By nina lalumia on 12-26-16
By: George Eliot
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Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon
- By: Jane Austen
- Narrated by: Norma West
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Previously unpublished in unabridged audio, these three works (one novel unpublished in her lifetime and two unfinished fragments) reveal Jane Austen's development as a great artist.
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For the Austen Addict
- By Joseph R on 09-09-09
By: Jane Austen
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Superb! Story and Narration A++
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Before marrying, Emma Bovary believed she would enter a life of luxury and passion like the sentimental stories she'd read in her novels and magazines. Now married to an ordinary country doctor her life is not the romantic ideal she imagined and seeks an escape through having extra-marital affairs. This devastating spiral into deceit and despair leads to catastrophic consequences. Emma Bovary continues to be enjoyed to this day because of its profound humanity, still as fresh today as when it was first written.
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Hard Times
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The Pickwick Papers
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When Samuel Pickwick decides to establish and preside over a travelling society, he unknowingly brings together three of the oddest men in all of London: Tracy Tupman, the loveless self-professed ladies’ man, Augustus Snodgrass, the poet who’s never put pen to paper, and Nathaniel Winkle, the endlessly clumsy sportsman. The ‘Pickwickians’ set off in search of new adventures outside of the confines of the city. Along with a host of other colourful Dickensian characters such as Mr Pickwick’s love-struck landlady, Mrs Bardell, and his trusty sidekick, Sam Weller.
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Done with gusto
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What listeners say about Within a Budding Grove
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- A. Dionysia
- 03-14-18
So Proust!
Good for lovers of Proust and know how he writes. The narrator has the correctly sensitive voice. Beautifully written ending.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Donald
- 01-11-11
Better than hard copy
Rowe's reading is brilliant. In fact, I've found the whole work more accessible and seductive as a listen than I did as a hard-copy read, thanks in large measure to Rowe's sensitive and often illuminating performance. I can't wait for the rest of the volumes to be available.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Kevin McCoffee
- 06-06-17
John Rowe is the reader for Proust and Moncrief
I've finished the first two volumes on audio book, occasionally reading on Kindle with the second volume, but I find it almost easier to follow John Rowe's narrative (though I read all six volumes in the tiny-script hardbacks back in the 90s). Now I'm listening to The Guermantes' Way, with the Neville narration. Just started. Maybe I'm in the transition phase, but I really miss my friend John Rowe. He took me through the labyrinthian sentences so smoothly. Maybe I'll grow to like Neville, but at the beginning of volume three he was too fast and didn't lead me as effortlessly Rowe. Anyway, apparently there is no choice. Rowe only recorded the first two volumes. (If I'm wrong let me know).
I have not dipped into newest written translations, which are said to be really good. And after I finish this round of Proust (with the Moncrief translation), I'll start again with the contemporay one). But Moncrief is so good, so good I don't know if I'm hearing Proust or Moncrief (or Rowe). But that's the nature of translation.
Whatever the case, Proust is worth a go. He's not right for everyone. I have friends (novelist friends who can't get into it). But I can. At any rate, dive into Proust, via book, Kindle, or audio. If it doesn't stick. Take a year off. Try again. If it still doesn't stick, you have every right to quit. Reading Proust is always about TIME (among a million other things), and maybe the time is not right for you now.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Regina
- 07-12-23
Delightful read that enriches one's life.
A wonderful, eloquent expression of a sophisticated mind. Many insights into the rewards of life.
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- G. Green
- 02-05-24
You. need to read Proust
Really. You’ve heard of Proudt. You’ve been put off by the length of the six-volume work. But, if anything, it’s too short.
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- not guilty
- 02-01-21
Monty python was correct - it’s impossible to sum up proust
There are few books I have read or listened to that I catch myself thinking I have learned as much about life and people. I find proust alternatively laugh out loud funny and beautiful. He makes me miss friends and family and old flames and love them all more the same. I find this narrator wonderfully soothing and dramatic without being overly so. The moment when proust highlights his own neurosis or poses himself a question and then answers, sublime.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Hunter Weir
- 02-25-19
Rowe is great!
Proust is life changing, and Rowe brings the words to life. Get this one now!
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Overall
- beatrice
- 10-04-09
insomniac's dream
Proust writes marvelous stuff, but his interminable sentences can make his work difficult to read. Now, John Rowe to the rescue: he reads so sensitively, it's like listening to one's own thoughts. I was so glad to find he's started another volume of Proust's masterwork, and look forward eagerly to the second installment, and hopefully more to come. Insomniacs, take note: with Marcel Proust/James Rowe on your iPod, you may be able to jettison the Lunesta. I mean this in a good way (and I think that Proust, who wrote at night in that cork-lined room, would have approved): the narrative is absorbing, complex, seductive, and nonlinear, perfect for bedtime (or the wee hours of the night), as it hardly matters where you leave off or pick it up again.
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32 people found this helpful
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- Yoshi Tryba
- 02-17-20
Fun and colorful
Proust is an extraordinary author - noticing so many details and describing them wondrously. So good.
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- Tad Davis
- 09-04-19
Not for me
My first encounter with Proust was Simon Vance’s reading of Swann’s Way. It left me feeling grumpy and irritable. It certainly wasn’t the narration — Simon Vance can make a traffic report sound interesting. And it’s not John Rowe’s narration for this second volume either: he is equally charming and graceful. But he can’t overcome the aspects of Proust that I find so frustrating. The pattern of endless rumination and little overt action established in the first volume continues in this second one. If I had any sense of having something in common with these vapid people, I might not mind. But they bore me; they annoy me; they baffle me. I find myself wishing one of them would have a sudden attack of flatulence, just to liven things up a little.
At one point, I thought things were getting better: at last! the narrator has gone to a brothel! — but Proust managed to make even that potentially interesting development sound shallow and desiccated. Later, near the end of the book, the narrator develops a promising crush on a young woman named Albertine; but alas, she turns out to be either a mean-spirited tease or monumentally dense about the implications of her flirtatious remarks. (She invites him to a secret tryst at night in her hotel room, and then furiously rings the alarm when he tries to kiss her.)
It’s like having to sit through 25 hours of “My Dinner with André.” It’s full of sound and fury, signifying nothing — except that there’s no fury and very little sound.
Proust’s characters — certainly at least the narrator — are cursed with the same kind of morbid self-consciousness that afflicts the characters of Dostoevsky. There’s one crucial difference: in Dostoevsky, the anguish is existential and the consequences are life or death; in Proust, at least as far as the first two volumes are concerned, the anguish is a mild cough and the consequences are a hangnail. He seems not to notice that his characters are mostly buffoons, the narrator being the biggest buffoon of all.
What can you say about a young man who’s old enough to visit prostitutes, even to have a favorite one, and still cries himself to sleep when his grandmother doesn’t invite him to kiss her goodnight? (The same grandmother who exasperates him because.... she wants to get her photograph taken?) I can’t figure his age. Maybe my attention wandered when he mentioned that. At times he seems to be a young adult, but overall he has the emotional maturity of a pre-teen.
As I said in my comments on the first volume, people I know and and whose literary judgement I trust tell me I’m missing something. I accept that. So, Monsieur Proust, it’s not you, it’s me. I will read one more volume, if only to expose myself to yet another narrator (Neville Jason). But then I expect to call a halt to the proceedings. It seems clear at this point that I am not for Proust, and he is not for me.
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