Marcel Proust - In Search Of Lost Time

I haven't read the complete series, only the first volume, and am currently reading the second. So far, anyway, it really does seem to live up to the hype completely. It's a slow read but worth it, at least so far.

My dad read them all. It took him a long, long while. I used to commute into Manhattan with him every day, and on the train, morning and evening, he'd read them. I always thought that when I get older, that I'd read them to, maybe after he's dead. That way, in some sense, I'll be able to connect with him, even if he is in the grave.

Depressing thoughts, yes.

More poor little bunny rabbit is ill, he's not eating. I took him to the emergency vet today, but have to bring him to the rabbit specialist tomorrow. I hope he's gonna be okay.

Ok. thank you for your replies. This encourages me even more to read them. Another thought I'm having is that it would be a good idea to read at least one work from all the winners of the Nobel prize in litterature. Anybody else got the same idea? I'm sure someone here's working his/her way through them as i type.

does anyone else purposefully pronounce his name like "Prowst" just to tick people off?

^^I can't say I do, no... haha great input to the conversation, but it's all fun and games:)

Hey, it's actually called "How Proust Can Change Your Life". http://www.alaindebotton.com/literature.asp

I just read this review on amazon and it cracked me up. I did add it to my save for later amazon cart. I think I would rather read this book than any actual Proust. I tried once and it didn't interest me at all.

Review
What can we learn from a reclusive mummy's-boy who spent the last 12 years of his life closeted like an anchorite in a cork-lined study? Anything that's worth knowing, as these elegant essays point out. Whether or not to let a friend know what's on your mind, for instance, and why it is good for the soul if your loved one refuses to meet you for dinner. Alain de Botton clearly knows his Proust back to front, but he wears his knowledge lightly and writes with wit and verve. More fun than any number of tantric sex manuals and better for you to boot. (Kirkus UK)

I'm sorry William isn't well. Let us know what the specialist has to say.

Ok. I'm not reading this book in english that's why I messed the title up. I sort of direct translated the swedish title. But yeah, it's a good book so far:)

Ah, I understand now.

Alain de Botton is for sure one of the finest essayists at work these days. I read a great deal of non-fiction, especially in the categories of literary and cultural criticism. I love an erudite work that's made accessible and friendly for non-specialists. His book Status Anxiety is also worth checking out.

I wonder, though, what's with Proust becoming some kind of favorite intellectual trump card or power word. Apparently the name evokes book sales amongst people who'd love to feel like they've read Proust without taking the monastic vows necessary to get through it all. (I'm as guilty as anyone!) But hey, check it out, there is a veritable cottage industry of brainy books that play on the name, all published within the last year or two.

Proust and the Squid didn't hook me. On the other hand,

Proust Was a Neuroscientist is an excellent read.

http://www.amazon.com/Proust-Was-Neuroscientist-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/05470859...

It goes into the way the Victorian authors wrestled with 19th century science and challenged leading concepts of the day in their fiction. For example, George Eliot was willing to embrace Darwinism, to an extent, but she readily saw past the facile assumptions of logical positivism. You get the personal stuff, too. She had a devastating one-way romance with biologist Herbert Spencer, who couldn't see past George Eliot's famously unappealing looks anymore than he could see past the latest scientific notions of his day.

On the other end of the beauty scale, there's a great chapter on Virginia Woolf and her absolute brilliance and madness. The doctors of her day had some strange and completely worthless ideas for treating mental anguish. Reading about her makes me want to go back in time and remove those stones from her pockets and lead her away from that river by the hand.

But the book is more than just a roundup of various Victorian authors, their heartbreaks, and their intellectual struggles with emerging science. It shows how the best authors of that day almost predicted or intuitively demonstrated later and better refined understandings that modern neuroscience supports simply by staying true to their humanism and the totality of personal experience.

Oh yeah, I haven't yet read the essay in this book on Auguste Escoffier, "the chef who essentially invented modern French cooking." But it should add some additional appeal for the foodies amongst us.

You sold me, I think I'll start with Proust Was a Neuroscientist

From reading reviews I get the sense that Botton really loves Proust and his book is perhaps aimed at enticing readers to undertake those monastic vows and read Proust? People that just want to bandy about the name Proust can get by with cliff notes and wikipedia. They don't need to read a 200 page book.

Oh, absolutely!

A 200 page book? It's about 3000 pages all together. Or are you not talking about "In Search Of Lost Time" rather than "How Proust Can Change Your Life" or "Proust Was a Neuroscientist"?

...and...does the above sentence make any sense at all to you? haha

Oh, I meant "How Proust Can Change Your Life". That book is about 200 pages long and after reading it, people might be inspired to read the 3000 pages of Proust.

Oh, you're absolutely right about that book in terms of the author's apparent motivation or intent. I believe in his sincere and unabashed appreciation of Proust and his desire to share that love with other readers and with the world.

But it's also possible to look at his book as part of a publishing trend. In fact, if Botton's book came first, he might have started that trend, quite without meaning to.

You know, the next guy comes along with a book aimed at essentially the same readership and it also riffs on Proust, right in the title. As long as it's a substantially different book, offering its own range of intellectual delights, then riffing on Proust is considered an excellent selling point for it. The publisher looks at the numbers for the previous extended essay or collection with a title that riffs on Proust and says, "Yep, our money can go here and see a return."

In fact, Jonah Lehrer may have had a working title that didn't include the name Proust in it, at all, since his book, unlike Botton's, treats so many different authors and subjects. His agent could have looked at a manuscript titled "What Whitman Knew that Descartes Didn't" and said, "Hey, let's emphasize the Proust section and work that into the title instead."

So I'm not really criticizing reading habits quite as much as I'm poking fun at the disparity between highbrow intellectual work and the machinations of the publishing industry. I know that no matter how much an acquisitions editor believes in a book, whether the publisher buys it or not comes down to a marketing decision. And one ramification of these marketing decisions is little trends or waves that crest and then break and then get followed by another.

I keep wanting to pick up Proust was a Neuroscientist, mainly because Lehrer's been a guest on Radiolab a number of times and has been quite interesting. You've enticed me further; I really shouldn't be spending more money right now, thanks for tempting me, jerk.

Oh, I see what you're getting at. In a way it seems to be a bad marketing ploy because how many books on proust will someone buy? I'm not a good example because I'm obviously getting two! Of course, that's because they were more or less personally recommended to me.

Well, think of it less as marketing multiple books on Proust to the very same person, and more as knowing that the name Proust sells books to a certain kind of reader, and that it's a big enough demographic to be worth reaching.

There's nothing sinister in this, especially if it produces a book you want to read. But it shapes the field of available books and the way they get packaged. It's the force that made us see half a dozen books on Mysteries of the Knights Templar when the Da Vinci Code broke big.

Against my own argument, let me say that it's easy to be cynical about the publishing industry. Lots of well-meaning people who genuinely love books work in publishing. And it might be that the centrality of Proust to the Lehrer book is rooted completely in the author's own thinking, rather than a marketing decision.

In fact, I just looked it up and there is actually a ten year span between the first edition of Alain de Botton's book (1997) and the first edition of Jonah Lehrer's (2007). So it's quite possible that influence, if any, could have flowed in the most natural possible way: Alain de Botton's book could have inspired Jonah Lehrer's love of Proust in the first place. Or there could be no connection at all, other than Proust as a cultural force and a tiny handful of gifted academic thinkers calling attention to it.

and a happy new year

You have some terrific point of views there Vigorous Puppy! I agree on that it could be a marketing strategy as well as just pure inspiration from Botton that made Lehrer want Prosuts name in the title. Anyhow, it's the context of the book that matters even though a good title is crucial for it to get readers. A book that doesn't catch your attention somehow will not even be noticed by the readers. So as long as the litterature is worth reading i don't mind the publishers using their whole arsenal of marketing tricks for the book to catch our attention. I actually encourage them to. Good litterature should by no means go unnoticed. Hell, use any name you want for it's title as long as it gives more human beings the satisfaction of enjoying a really superb book.

What I like about books such as this one is that they tell extraordinary tails that are ordinary facts. We've all been there and can find ourselves on one or more situations. Sometimes we don't want to admit it and pretend it never happened as we feel ashamed of our failure, other times we realize our actions after reading someone's thoughts on the matter. Either way, it's a book that describes human relationships, spiritually and sexually. Reading it I remembered how I first went to a sex shop and how I felt the need to hide this from my friend just to later find out they have been frequenting the stores themselves. It's only human.

Thanks for pointing that out nate I didn't even notice the first time I read it. I edited it to get the link out.

it's porktastic!!!!!