![]() ![]() Understandably, many readers hesitate to make the investment of time and attention required to assimilate even a fraction of the whole.Ĭompounding the challenge of sheer magnitude and of an extended plot, there is Proust's style. There is no substitute for the cumulative effect of the whole work. The first two sections of Proust's novel, "Combray" and "Swann in Love," can stand separately and have earned many admirers. Balzac's one-hundred-volume printout of all French society comes in separate packages the links between the volumes serveĪs a special reward for the persevering. The inordinate length of Proust's novel (three thousand pages) goes a long way toward explaining the wariness of readers. ![]() Monument to the artistic vocation, banked high on all sides by interpretation and biography, refuses to sink back into the sands of time. In an era when the significance and the privileged status of the work of art are being both questioned and reinforced, this ultimate On wide readership but on a myth of uniqueness that often hides his true attractions. His substantial reputation as an extreme case of something-long-windedness, psychological vivisection, the snobbery of letters, salvation by memory-rests not Joyce and Kafka, Faulkner and Camus sell hundreds of thousands A Field Guide to 'In Search of Lost Time'Īmong the handful of literary classics produced in this century, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is the most oceanic-and the least read. ![]()
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