Still forcing myself to continue reading Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time series. I'm midway through volume III. At 750-800 pages each, it's a commitment. Only three more volumes to go.
Surly keeps marvelling over why I continue to slog through. I'm not 100 per cent sure I can describe why myself. I do know that every 20-30 pages of snore inducing aristocratic Society talk, I come across something beautiful and timeless. Surly says Proust waffles (not surly's exact words) and takes several paragraphs to make a statement which could be accomplished with one sentence. I will give surly that. Proust's writing tends towards longwinded, and a paragraph can be several pages long, but for me it's worth it to get to those crystalline moments of timelessness.
Thomas Hardy's writing strikes a similar chord with me, it reaches across decades and decades and pulls me into the eternal now. I guess that feeling, combined with sheer stubborness in me, keeps me reading. I will not let Proust's gargantuan epic defeat me the way Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus did.
My sister rates Doctor Faustus one of her favourite books. She gave me her copy -- an expensive copy -- to read several years ago. I do not know how many times I tried to read it and got a few hundred pages in. I think upwards of six times perhaps. The book got weatherbeaten and damaged. Finally, I gave up.
So first, another 2500 pages of Proust. Then who knows? Maybe some Thomas Mann?
Surly keeps marvelling over why I continue to slog through. I'm not 100 per cent sure I can describe why myself. I do know that every 20-30 pages of snore inducing aristocratic Society talk, I come across something beautiful and timeless. Surly says Proust waffles (not surly's exact words) and takes several paragraphs to make a statement which could be accomplished with one sentence. I will give surly that. Proust's writing tends towards longwinded, and a paragraph can be several pages long, but for me it's worth it to get to those crystalline moments of timelessness.
Thomas Hardy's writing strikes a similar chord with me, it reaches across decades and decades and pulls me into the eternal now. I guess that feeling, combined with sheer stubborness in me, keeps me reading. I will not let Proust's gargantuan epic defeat me the way Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus did.
My sister rates Doctor Faustus one of her favourite books. She gave me her copy -- an expensive copy -- to read several years ago. I do not know how many times I tried to read it and got a few hundred pages in. I think upwards of six times perhaps. The book got weatherbeaten and damaged. Finally, I gave up.
So first, another 2500 pages of Proust. Then who knows? Maybe some Thomas Mann?