Product Description

Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin Classics brings Proust’s masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world, beginning with Lydia Davis’s internationally acclaimed translation of the first volume, Swann’s Way.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16038 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-30
• Released on: 2004-11-30
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780142437964
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
A sensitive and direct translation... Lydia Davis does us a great service in bringing us back to Proust. -- Claire Messud, Newsday

Indispensable... the crucial modernist work, overtopping the books of even such giants as Joyce and Mann. -- Peter Brooks, The New York Times Book Review

Review
Indispensable... the crucial modernist work, overtopping the books of even such giants as Joyce and Mann. (Peter Brooks, The New York Times Book Review)

A sensitive and direct translation... Lydia Davis does us a great service in bringing us back to Proust. (Claire Messud, Newsday)

About the Author
Marcel Proust (1871–1922) was the greatest French novelist of the twentieth century.

Lydia Davis is an acclaimed fiction writer. Made a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her translations, Davis was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2003.

Customer Reviews

A challenge and a pleasure at the same proportion
To read Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" is a pleasure and a challenge in the same proportion that any brave read can have. Not only is it a hard task, but also a very pleasant one. The books are written in such a way that readers are transported to another time and place, and get to know the characters as if they were old friends of ours. Of course, if it weren't like that, not many people would dare to try and read the seven novels that compound the whole series. But Proust is a master to keep your interested glued to his words. Even when this words are in a paragraph that lasts four pages.

"Swann's Way" is the first novel and it is a blessing and a curse at the same time. It is good because everything is new to us, so the `nameless' narrator takes his time to explain a lot of things, introduce people, describe places and the action is built up bit by bit. On the other hand, the reader is not used to Proust style and when we come across a paragraph that lasts four pages we get scared.

To make things more complicated, when he was writing "Remembrance of Things Past" Proust wanted to make a novel, but he also wanted to philosophize. Therefore, there is a lot of philosophy in his books. At first this device seems to be difficult to understand, to get the gist, but with time, one gets used to it, and is able to realize that we're not supposed to read this books in the same way we read any other novel.

Proust's work is about senses. He does not expect you to understand everything he is saying. His narrative is not cumulative. What he wants, in fact, is to make his reader feel what he was saying, to feel things like time passing through our lives and its effects on our memories. Bearing this in mind, any reader is able to focus on the poetic narrative and the author's idea rather than understanding the events.

Of course there is a plot in the book, but there are things that are more important to produce the effect Proust wanted. "Swann's Way" begins with the `nameless' narrator remembering experiences from his childhood in Combray. But the largest section of the novel is not about him, but about Swann, a friend of his family. Fifteen years before the events described in the first part, Swann felt in love with Odette, a woman with a terrible reputation. And this love affair will affect his life forever.

Despite Proust's language being evocative, it is not difficult to understand his sentences. His work is replete of references and allusions, mostly to visual arts, namely painting. Some descriptions are like the works of Monet and Botticelli. The writer also has interest in literature. The main character relationship to his mother echoes works as "Oedipus Rex".

Qualities like these make "Remembrance of Things Past" one of the most important works produced ever. With his caldron of references, ideas and images, Proust has created one of the most beloved works from the XX Century. It is certain that this series of books will be read for many many years to come, and will be seen as a definition of what we used to think.

if you want a paperback, this is the one to get!
Lydia Davis's new translation of Swann's Way is splendid. I've reviewed it in more detail under the Amazon listing for the hardcover Viking edition, which is the one I own. These are books I intend to keep, and I want them in hardcover. If your needs are more transient, then by all means buy this paperback edition.

In Britain, this first volume is titled The Way By Swann's, and there are a few differences in the text. (French quotations remain in French; conversation is shown by dashes instead of quotation marks.) So it would appear that this Penguin paperback has the same text as the U.S. Viking hardcover and is not simply an import.

Note that if you should buy this volume from a Marketplace seller, you ought to note the ISBN and make very sure that the seller is offering the book as shown and not an earlier translation by Scott-Montcrief or others. Believe me, Davis's is the one you want!

-- Dan Ford

Proust the Yenta
When I first read this novel 35 years ago, I found a button in a head shop that read, "PROUST IS A YENTA." It's true. Proust is, underneath all the vivid and evocative prose, a fellow who loves to dish the dirt, and the more sordid the better.

Poor Swann! In love with a two-timing hussy who takes him for all he's worth and alienates all his haute-bourgeois friends in the process. Amazing the lengths Proust goes to to tell this simple tale! No metaphorical stone goes unturned (as it were), no perfervid phrase unused, no nuance of ratiocinated feeling unnoticed.

If you are a Proust neophyte, understand that single sentences sometimes go on for more than a page and that paragraphs often take multiple pages to unfold -- that every diamond has infinite facets and all are examined. Only late Henry James rivals Proust in the complexity of his sentence sructures which seek to eke out the essence of the quintessence of feelings.

The effete narrator (for truly he defines the word "effete") spends the first 150 pages of the novel dissecting nostalgia for his childhood. Only after these rarified ramblings does he deign to tell us poor Swann's story!

Well, no one reads Proust for the tales. Either you'll think he's the greatest stylist of any language ever, or you'll stop reading after the first page. You may need a large dose of Elmore Leonard after reading Proust just to cleanse the palate! Still, there's nothing quite like it.