Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Blogging Proust for the Holidays

I've been reading Proust before bedtime, and somehow, now we are at an endless dinner party at the Verdurin's rented house  in the neighborhood of Balbec, at least close enough for a short train ride (with complications).  The Verdurin's decorating is critiqued.  A fish is served for dinner.  The food is seldom mentioned.  I guess that is because the conversation is so scintillating or that everyone is jockeying for social position and might as well be eating cardboard.


Except that these people are FRENCH!   Can you believe it?  I would so love to know what is served?  Of course Mrs. V. doesn't cook it herself, mais non!  Charlus is there and Cottard and the part of the "little clan" that summers in Balbec or environs.  It is amazing sometimes, that Proust can write so freakin' many words and yet neither the house nor characters are not offered much physical description.  Everything is in the head.  Not how we write today.  No talking heads allowed.  Nope.  None. 


A couple of blogs have caught my eye and you might want to check them out.  And I haven't forgotten my promise to publish the Madeline recipe.  Bear with me.




I am looking forward to progress in Sodom and Gomorrah and then on to the rest of the books, because the last one is the best but one has to "earn" it by reading the whole work.  

Odette  

 

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