Marcel Proust
LETTERS
Funny and full of sex: why you should read Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
Readers strike an encouraging note for those sceptical of the joys of Proust, saying it has plenty to make it worth perservering
I read all seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time over a nine-month period. In answer to Mike Bromberg (Letters, 26 May), a great deal happens besides the famous madeleine incident: the advent of electric lighting, motorcars and aeroplanes, not to mention endless romances and social intrigues. My memory is that every hundred pages or so of tedium would yield five to 10 pages of the most revelatory reading that I have ever experienced. Was it worth it? Totally. Would I do it again? Probably not. But I won the bet.
Bill Gaver
London
Proust is not inaccessible. I read most of it in French on the Métro during my year abroad in Paris. It was the 1960s, and being buried in a book was a good way of deterring unwanted male attention. For anyone who fears that nothing happens, read on – there is a great variety of sex, for example, and plenty of it.
En route, you can enjoy Proust’s unrivalled powers of description – from a blossoming May tree to the voice of a telephonist to the effect of stumbling on a paving stone – and his masterful analysis of psychology and social structures.
Sally Burch
London
I have read In Search of Lost Time three times in translation, and must point out that it is very funny in places, with some surprising plot developments.
Claire Chandy
Bristol
Some years ago while filming in India, I took a volume of Proust to keep me going during the weeks I’d be away. The crew wondered if I was really reading it and moved my bookmark. They were impressed when I complained I’d lost my place.
Anthony Burton
Stroud, Gloucestershire
Those who find Proust daunting – and who doesn’t? – should try the bande dessinée versionpublished in six volumes by Delcourt. Accessible, highly entertaining and surprisingly faithful to the aims of the prose original.
John Prescott Thomas
Bristol
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