À L'OMBRE de la REPRÉSENTATIONOn my review of Du côté de chez Swann I had concentrated on the pre-eminence of the visual. The careful attention paid by Proust to light, to colour, to objects that add colour such as flowers, and to painting and the visual arts in general, led me to conceive of hi...
What follows is a collection of thoughts and notes that I have finally transcribed from post-its, napkin doodlings, margin scribbles and ideas floating around in my brain for weeks. Please forgive its faults and incompleteness. I hope there is something in it of sense to be retrieved:I.tSeeing“Do...
"One morning, Saint-Loup confessed to me that he had written to my grandmother to give her news of me and to suggest to her that, since there was a telephone service functioning between Paris and Doncières, she might make use of it to speak to me. In short, that very day she was to give me a call...
(part one of three)Marcel Proust’s monumental novel, A la recherche du temps perdu, traditionally translated into English as Remembrance of Things Past, from a line in one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and probably better translated in more recent editions as In Search of Lost Time, consists of seven...
I finished Sodom and Gomorrah over a week ago, and since then I've been mulling over whether to write a proper "review" of it or not. It was the most amorphous of any of the volumes yet, and thus it is slightly more difficult to speak about, or really wrap my thoughts around. Also, at this poin...
A work of art is experienced as a temporal, durational phenomenon. It is also an object of physicality, something that is reacted upon and reproduced by our senses and processed, firstly, by our intellect. Therefore a work of art is an object of space-time, as it contains within itself dimensio...
A curious book for sure. I keep vascilating between 3 and 4 (as if it matters, of course!), as it is a weird book in the way that Proust, a legend, imitates other high literary priests of his age, which, i mean, i have not seen done anywhere before. i realize i'm taking a mixtape approach to desc...
insolently erected there despite the protests which the heads of families had addressed in vain to the mayor, I reached the cliff and followed its winding paths in the direction of Balbec. I heard, without responding to it, the appeal of the hawthorns. Less opulent neighbours of the blossoming ap...
2.Bressant-style: Jean-Baptiste Prosper Bressant (1815–86) was a well-known actor who introduced a new hairstyle which consisted of wearing the hair in a crew-cut in front and longer in the back. 3. Jockey Club: one of the most exclusive and elegant of the Parisian clubs, founded in 1834. 4. Comt...
The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers wit...
It was M. de Charlus. “You don’t mind if we go a little way on foot?” he asked dryly, when we were in the courtyard. “We’ll walk until I find a cab that suits me.” “You wished to speak to me, Monsieur?” “Ah, yes, as a matter of fact there were some things I wanted to say to you, but I’m not so su...