No matter how late to the party, I feel fortunate to finally discover Proust in all his abundant vulnerability, passion, tenderness, anxiety, and vigor. But in today’s world of ever-fleeting focus, we shouldn’t be surprised that titles as heavy, long, complex, and volumed as Proust Swann’s Way (and In Search of Lost Time books) have been run over by Instagram and Tik-Tok. After all, a plethora of articles, textbooks, reviews, essays, and biographies draw on Proust’s grandiose contributions to literature, including How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain De Botton (which I will read soon). The first volume of the book that established Proust as one of the finest voices of the modern age-satirical, skeptical, confiding, and endlessly varied in his response to the human condition-Swann’s Way also stands on its own as a perfect rendering of a life in art, of the past re-created through memory.Swann’s Way (and I’m sure the following six volumes) are full of such long (really long and semi-coloneated) lines full of deep wisdom about human composition, our inherently corrupt and compassionate nature, the everlasting misery of love and desire, and the sweetness of life. The writing is so ingenious I wonder why don’t I run into Proust’s work more often. It also enfolds the short novel Swann’s Love, an incomparable study of sexual jealousy, which becomes a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure of In Search of Lost Time. Swann’s Way, the first part, is one of the preeminent novels of childhood-a sensitive boy’s impressions of his family and neighbors, all brought dazzlingly back to life years later by the famous taste of a madeleine. Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest single work of the twentieth century. Premium acid-neutral archival paper that will not yellow.
This limited edition is published exclusively for subscribers to The Greatest Books of the Twentieth Century. Author: Marcel Proust, CK Scott Moncrieff (trans), Van Dongen (illus)
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