Ah Proust!

Ah Proust! In an effort to be more lettered, more well-read, I decided to read Swann's Way the first volume of Proust's In Search of Lost Time. And although I enjoyed I don't know if I enjoyed it immensely and further I don't know if I appreciated it's genious. In form and style it is different from most novels I have read in the past year, which has been limited to hard-boiled detective novels and non-fiction about music. The short punchy prose of Chandler and the long digressive flowery prose of Proust might as well be of different forms they are so far apart. Though they both rely on metaphor and colorful description, one just taking it's time a little more.

Is there any inherent value in being well-read or as in my case of having read Swann's Way in lieu of whatever. I don't have a strong opinion on it. With some irony it can be noted that In Search of Lost Time is itself about growth and learning through rememberance. It is fair to say that I found more to relate to every day life than I have in most other novels. And what is the role of the novel? And what to expect of one? In reading a classic should I have expected the sky to open and God to come down and tap me on the brow? Of course not. In enjoying the novel I have gotten all that one can expect.

But what to read next? I've already picked up another book I've unsuccessfully tried to finish in the past, Foucault's Birth of the Clinic, and it promises to be more difficult and the nuggets to be deeper buried than any of Proust's. Then after that is it more Proust? or on to other things? Steinbeck and Sterne? Oh well we'll see and so I will continue.