Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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Immerse yourself in a rich, dense world of descriptive thought

Unreadable

something you should simply do...

Fine translation...

compare the translations first!

Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Marcel Proust
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel

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ASIN: 0142437964
Release Date: 2004-11-30

Book 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.

Customer Reviews:

Immerse yourself in a rich, dense world of descriptive thought.......2007-08-31

I think people make too much of the 'difficulty' of Proust's writing, and I'm no over-educated super-literary snob, either (probably sufficiently proven in this sentence alone). Don't be scared off by the reviews claiming to have not been able to get through it. Sure you need to concentrate, hopefully without interruption, while reading Proust, but is that so bad? Isn't that a big part of what reading is all about?

Swann's Way is a rich and elegant tapestry, reflected nicely in the beautiful new cover design. It feels like a volume of pure thought of the first order - ruminative, peripatetic, placid, and somehow effortless and simple, despite the highly embroidered language. However, the language is not merely complex for complexity's sake, but to convey the intricacy of the thought therein, and, when combined with the gentle, steady pacing from which Proust never wavers, creates the feeling of wisdom itself unfolding on the page. It is a welcome antidote to the concoctions of the most "brilliant" contemporary authors being trumpeted today, that often leave you with nothing other than a fleeting amazement at the cleverness of the author.

After every reading session I felt richer and wiser, and more able to face the world with the same thoughtfulness that the narrator does (this doesn't mean that I was able to, mind you, just felt so). To me that's what reading is all about, and if that's wrong...then I don't wanna be right.

Unreadable.......2007-07-30

This was not a book I could pick up and read. Although I read the intro and a study guide and was keenly anticipating reading one of the greatest books ever written, I was unable to. I read the first Combray twice and still did not understand sections I had read. I felt defeated, disappointed, and stupid. The book, for me, requires intense concentration - no distractions or noise while reading - a virtually impossible scenario in my world. After reading the synopsis in the back of the book I wasn't sure I would want to pursue this even in a study group or classroom situation. It sounded dry and boring and I'm not sure it would be worth the effort for me.

something you should simply do..........2007-06-04

Reading Proust is one of those things that simply should be done. Swann's Way is 400+ pages of almost unbelievable prose, a river, a torrent of words, phrases, paragraphs that sweeps you along through it seemingly without conscious effort or care to the all too quick end.
This book is simply staggering, I can't think of any other way to describe it or explain it. It simply must be read.
There is an old saying that everyone should see Paris before they die. The same sentiment is true for Proust - you should simply do it.

Fine translation..........2007-03-01

Before reading Lydia Davis's translation, I'd wandered half-way into Scott Moncrieff's original version before getting lost. I'd read a review of this edition by Christopher Hitchens, who faults Davis's prose in comparison to Moncrieff/Kilmartin's. I feel however, that Proust's sentence-construction is so complex that the modernized language is a tremendous asset. This is a fine introduction to Proust; it comes with an introductory essay, a complete set of notes (which is very much needed), and a brief synopsis at the back (which could actually be a little more thorough).

compare the translations first!.......2007-02-21

Just as a general note with Proust translations, compare them in a bookstore before you buy any of them.
There is the original C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation, which is beautiful, though based on a flawed edition put together shortly after Proust's death (especially the later books in the set).

Then there is Terrence Kilmartin's revision, which is based on a much better French edition. You can still find editions of this used, and occasionally new as well. I prefer this one, as Kilmartin didn't change most of the truly beautiful language that Moncrieff rendered except in a few places to clarify confusing sentences.

D.J. Enright, who worked with Kilmartin, made further revisions after the latter's death, whose work (so he says) was incomplete. His reworking is based on yet an even newer edition of the French text, though with fewer changes than the previous French edition had from the original. I feel that Enright modernized the language too much. He claims French hasn't changed much as a language compared to English since the early 20th Century, so to approximate how it would read to a French person today, it needs to be put into more comtemporary language. I don't care for it personally.

I've read some of these other, altogether new translations, which is a good effort considering the potential for incoherence you might have reading a revision of a revision of a translation (whew!). They're not bad, but nowhere near as much of a "new standard" as, say, the Pevear-Volokhonsky translations of Dostoevsky, which give the reader a clearer original while still using beautiful and idiomatic English.

But back to Proust. Decide for yourself! Compare an old version of Moncrieff's translation to his revisors, and then check out these new ones published by Penguin.

And better yet, if you understand French at all, look at a French copy and just absorb the rhythm, the flow of the words, and find a translation that feels the same.

I can't tell you how many times I've spoken to people who hated foreign books in translation, only to find out they read a translation that reads like a textbook and not like something that was meant to be enjoyed!!

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Swann's Way
Hmmm....Will it get any better than this?
Fabulous Writing But Not A Novel: A Lengthy Narrative On Life
Beautiful but fatiguing
A Must-read

Swann's Way (Modern Library Classics)
Marcel Proust
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0812972090
Release Date: 2004-04-27

Book Description

The first and best known volume of one of the landmarks of world literature. Available separately for those who want to approach Proust carefully!

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Download Description

Swann's Way, the first part of A la recherche de temps perdu, Marcel Proust's seven-part cycle, was published in 1913. In it, Proust introduces the themes that run through the entire work. The narrator recalls his childhood, aided by the famous madeleine; and describes M. Swann's passion for Odette. The work is incomparable. Edmund Wilson said "[Proust] has supplied for the first time in literature an equivalent in the full scale for the new theory of modern physics."

Customer Reviews:

Swann's Way.......2007-07-15

The product and the narration is very well done. Unfortunately, I found that Proust is just not for me.

Hmmm....Will it get any better than this?.......2007-03-07

So i finally made the commitment to reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time. I've been contemplating this for years, and this spring i have the time so i've excitedly decided to forge what will be a memorable relationship with the author and the text.

But geez, am i DISAPPOINTED with the first "installment"!!! I'm usually an avid reader of European classics, and although i wasn't expecting Proust to be thrilling, i guess i didn't realize that the work was completely plotless.

I have to stop and remind myself (lest i give up?) that i am reading for the full experience rather than instant gratification, so i'm going to doggedly push on, and read something "fun" like Waugh or Vonnegut between each of the 6 books of I.S.O.L.T...

On a postive note, Proust's unique style allows the reader's mind to wander with the narrator, so i honestly can't say that i was "bored". It is also interesting that Proust is so often right on target about the human psyche and about society, when he, an invalid, was himself removed from it for much of his life.

Finally, Swann's Way is, let's face it, a moderately thick book. Without plot, you'd think that it would be a slow and dragging read. However, his long sentences somehow propel the reader forward to the next interesting speculation or to the next social event, and once again, his style is such that we become involved in the character's life....what will be the next step in Swann and Odette's relationship?

Although i have mixed feelings about the start of my Proustian journey, I console myself with his notions of time. The way we feel and think about something while we are in the midst of it may differ greatly from the way we feel and think about it once we are removed from it. Perspective is altered by distance (and memory, imagine that...). Perhaps once i finish the work in its entirety the pieces will all come together and there will be a cumulative gain. If nothing else, there will be a sense of accomplishment!

Fabulous Writing But Not A Novel: A Lengthy Narrative On Life.......2007-02-03

In search of Lost Time is regarded by many as a key work of modern literature, bridging ideas from the 19th and 20th centuries. Proust is often compared to Joyce and Kafka.

This is revised translation of the early Moncrieff translation. That was the primary translation for the first 50 years after the first publication in French. The present work includes the later changes to the original French manuscripts made in 1954. These additions and changes were excluded in the first manuscript from Proust. The manuscript was revised in the Pleiade edit of 1954 to include all of Proust's final edits. Those edits, additions, and changes are now translated and revised by Enright.

There are three parts to Volume I:
- Combray (the town)
- Swann in Love (Swann is the family name of the narrator)
- Place-Names-The Name

Here is a question for the average reader: is this a novel? What is it? The present Volume I is 600 pages, and if you continue on after Volume I, you face another 5000 pages or so. It is not a novel and it is not a play or drama as one sees with Shakespeare; instead, it is a seemingly endless narrative. Should we be concerned with what it is? The answer is yes, because some will find Proust to be a tedious challenge while others will love him.

For example, Madam Bovary is a novel. It has a beginning, an end, clear characters who are good, evil, and indifferent. It takes place in 19th century French countryside as does Proust, and unlike Proust it is a gripping tale. The writing by Flaubert is flawless. The structure is perfect. That is a novel. I read all 500 pages of Madame Bovary in one day and was very entertained and impressed.

Proust's Volume I, by contrast, has taken me 12 months to read. Again, as with Flaubert, the prose is faultless and the details described are done exquisitely, but there is no plot, and it is not gripping. It is a series of memories or short sections. Almost by definition, these short pieces do not carry the drama of a well balanced novel. They are weakly linked together plus the writing is complicated by many characters, often relatives of the narrator. If you put the book down and start again you are momentarily lost. Some readers, and that includes myself, wonder why we continue.

Proust is part of our literary education and one can appreciate the interwoven snapshots of life, the beautiful descriptions of rural Combray, the characters of France, and the relatives in his family. It is an endless narrative about a man's life and those pieces of his life. It is a collection of memories. Here in Volume I we see three broad snapshots of one man's life; we escape to 19th century France, and we become part of a seemingly endless tale about the fine details of that life. If that interests you, then you will love Proust.

Only the most patient should read Proust. Be prepared for beautiful prose and French 19th century life.

Beautiful but fatiguing.......2007-01-24

Clearly, Proust has a remarkable gift for perception, as if he is able to see human experience, circumstance, and even plain objects, in exploded detail, and distill them for the reader. Particularly in the first and third parts of the book, he frequently drops gems of absolute truth, in much the same way that Shakespearean couplets remarkably capture the essence of love or revenge. To me, this is the reward of reading the book, and what makes the challenge worth undertaking.

At first, you may be overwhelmed by his very complex sentences, as others have noted. It is important to Proust to express an entire thought in one sentence; a lofty objective with sometimes dire consequences, but Proust adheres to it admirably. You soon learn to maintain the subject of the sentence in your head while Proust explores two or three tangents to the original thought before he comes back to it. What works in the reader's favor is that Proust is very regular with his sentence structure, so once you develop a feel for it, it ceases to intimidate.

The book is divided into three parts: The first and third parts recount experiences of Proust's early childhood, while the second part details the love affair of Charles Swann. To me, the first part is the most beautiful, followed by the third part. You will be able to tell within the first 50 or so pages whether or not Proust will suit you. The second part of the book becomes plodding and monotonous, as Proust narrates even a simple set of circumstances in many layers of redundancy, each recounted in exhaustive detail, in his complex style which begins to feel formulaic, wordy, and indulgent. Here's the subject of the sentence, tangent number one, the tangent to tangent number one, tangent number two, and then it ends with yet another metaphor about invalids. The regularity of sentence structure is much easier to tolerate in the first and third parts because Proust flits between several ideas or subjects, whereas in the second part, he drills to the very core of the earth on one or two subjects with a few variations. I found myself feeling pretty burned out, counting down pages to the end of Part 2. My advice is to pick up your reading speed if it starts to become boring or if you lose your concentration.

If Proust were not quite so overly thorough in Part 2, or if he had varied his cadence or sentence structure a bit more, I could recommend this book without hesitation. As it is, it will require an unusual investment of concentration and patience, but I believe it is worth it.

A Must-read.......2006-06-21

I have been planning for some years to read IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, and finally started in March with Lydia Davis' translation of SWANN'S WAY.

Proust is one of the most empathetic authors that I have ever encountered. To tell the story of his youth, to describe his fears and joys and loves, he turns inward, and in doing so, gives a strikingly accurate portrayal of the human heart, and human folly.

SWANN'S WAY is diveded into four sections, too long to be called chapters: Combray, Combray II, Swann in Love, Place-Names:The Name.

Combray and Combray II tell of the summers of Marcel's youth, his grandmother and great-aunt Leonie (who never got out of her bed), Francoise, the maid, walks with his parents, meeting M. Swann, their neighbor, meeting M. Swann's daughter for the first time and falling in love with her. It is very difficult for an author to write from the perspective of a child and do it convicingly, but Proust succeeds here. I loved little Marcel, a sensitive, naive little boy who absorbs everything around him.

'Swann in Love' tells the story of M. Swann and how he fell in love with one Odette d'Crecy, a woman not of his class who seduces him and then breaks his heart.

In 'Place-Names: The Name' we read about a slightly older Marcel, and his first attempts at winning the heart of Gilberte, the daughter of M. Swann. My favorite image in SWANN'S WAY comes from 'Place Names' - an image of Odette d'Crecy strolling down the Avenue of the Acacias alone, which Proust includes in his diatribe against the death of elegance.

As the purpose of writing IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME was to recover his forgotten memories, Proust's tale is not told as a series of interconnected events, but as a collection of interwoven memories - some of them incomplete. [The short novella, 'Swann in Love', that is contained in the novel is an exception - though still told from an internalized perspective, that of M. Swann.]

In this format, description trumps plotline and dialogue. His descriptions - of tapestries in cathedrals, of a child's longing for his mother, of the beauty of words and the pain of falling in love - are first rate. I found many times that reading this book was a lot like looking at a great painting, or a sunset - soothing, [also with the exception of 'Swann in Love', where I found myself completely aggravated with M. Swann and hating Odette. An author that can calm you but also create characters capable of arousing passionate anger must be great.]

SWANN'S WAY is highly recommended.

Proust: Swann's Way (Landmarks of World Literature)

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Proust: Swann's Way (Landmarks of World Literature)
Sheila Stern
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Proust's Way: A Field Guide to In Search of Lost Time
To the Lighthouse

ASIN: 0521328160

Book Description

Swann’s Way, published in 1913, is the first part of Proust’s seven-part novel A la Recherche du temps perdu. The author’s expansion, revision and correction of the work were cut short by his death in 1922, and sixty-six years later editors are still producing variants of the last three volumes based on working notebooks. The novel’s structure was compared by its author to that of a cathedral, and its status is that of one of the greatest literary landmarks of the twentieth century. Sheila Stern’s study begins with a summary of the whole novel and goes on to give an account of the activity of reading as part of its subject-matter. Two chapters are devoted to Swann’s Way itself, with close attention to the opening pages, and to such topics as memory, time, imagery and names. The book’s reception in various Western literatures is discussed, and there is a guide to further reading.

Remembrance of Things Past: Volume I - Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove (Vintage)

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Note: this review is of Heuet's adaptation, not the original book
The Holy Grail
A Worthy Investment
my favorite book
Learning to swim-- my first Proust reading experience

Remembrance of Things Past: Volume I - Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove (Vintage)
Marcel Proust
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Remembrance of Things Past: Volume II - The Guermantes Way & Cities of the Plain (Vintage)
Remembrance of Things Past: Combray (Remembrance of Things Past)
Remembrance of Things Past; Volume 2 Part 2: Within a Budding Grove (Remembrance of Things Past)
The Cambridge Companion to Proust (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
Swann's Way (Modern Library Classics)

ASIN: 0394711823
Release Date: 1982-08-12

Amazon.com

Marcel Proust whiled away the first half of his life as a self-conscious aesthete and social climber. The second half he spent in the creation of the mighty roman-fleuve that is Remembrance of Things Past, memorializing his own dandyism and parvenu hijinks even as he revealed their essential hollowness. Proust begins, of course, at the beginning--with the earliest childhood perceptions and sorrows. Then, over several thousand pages, he retraces the course of his own adolescence and adulthood, democratically dividing his experiences among the narrator and a sprawling cast of characters. Who else has ever decanted life into such ornate, knowing, wrought-iron sentences? Who has subjected love to such merciless microscopy, discriminating between the tiniest variations of desire and self-delusion? Who else has produced a grief-stricken record of time's erosion that can also make you laugh for entire pages? The answer to all these questions is: nobody.

Book Description

One of the great works of Western literature, now in the new definitive French Pleiade edition translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. Volume one includes SWANN'S WAY and WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE.

Customer Reviews:

Note: this review is of Heuet's adaptation, not the original book.......2006-10-17

Stephane Heuet, Remembrance of Things Past: Within a Budding Grove, vol. I (ComicsLit, 2000)

Heuet continues his ambitious adaptation of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past with the first part of Within a Budding Grove. Our narrator is growing up, and the focus of this volume is a trip to the seaside, meeting some people, getting in touch with old friends, always silently reflecting on both his memories of the past (of course) and the social consciousness of the world around him. If you liked the first one, you'll like this one as well. ***

The Holy Grail.......2006-08-10

Very well....I'm finally, after years of putting it off, writing a review of a work of Art that can't be reviewed in any meaningful sense of the term, a work of Art that approaches the sacred. As another reviewer puts it, if you think you have read literature with "depths" before, this opus will make ANYTHING you've ever read seem, in comparison, like one of those vapid books one picks up at airports during layovers. It is a work by which other novels, poems, paintings are to be judged rather than the other way around. In fact, after reading Proust, one can immediately tell if other "great writers" have read him almost from the start. Recent Booker Prize winning John Banville's The Sea is a good example of this.

The first time I read this work, about ten years ago, it was the ONLY thing I did, so enraptured was I. For a month, all I did was lie on my bed or, alternately, on the sofa downstairs and read, putting a dash mark at the end of one of the two-page paragraphs when I had to get up to eat or to check the mail or to feed my dog or to answer the phone or to get some shuteye, and then dive back in as soon as possible. - I don't use the term "dive" lightly - That's the only metaphor that comes close to expressing what it's like to read this book. You dive in and plunge deeper and deeper than you thought any Art could ever take you and, if you make it to the end, arise out of the deep cadences of philosophical reverie that constitute Proust's spellbinding meditations on love and time to behold a world rich and strange. - Proust truly does change your life. One never really recovers from reading him.

A few comments on what some of the other (serious) reviewers have said: 1) A La Recherche du Temps Perdu is not untranslatable and I don't know why exactly the English translation wasn't In Search of Lost Time instead of Remembrance of Things Past, taken, of course from the Shakespearian sonnet. But there it is. 2) I am in complete agreement with the reviewer who avers that unless you have been in love and suffered, which critic Harold Bloom remarks, commenting on Proust, means, eventually, everyone who has ever been in love, you will miss Proust's deepest apercus and regard them (as one reviewer does) as "silly."

I'm not sure what else I can say. I've probably go on too much already. If you are a true lover of Art in its highest sense, please pick up this Holy Grail of literature, even if you are intimidated, as many reviewers admit to being at first. For, as Proust says:

"Thus, it is in states of mind destined not to last that we make the irrevocable decisions of our lives."

Reading Proust is one of these decisions you won't regret

A Worthy Investment.......2006-07-12

Yes, it is long. Yes, the sentences are complex. Nonetheless, this novel is a worthy investment of one's efforts, because it isolates events that are so innately human that anyone who reads this novel will relate to it. Beyond just reading it because one feels obligated to do so as bibliophile, enjoy the greatest achievement of 20th-century France because it is witty, insightful, daring, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny.

I recommend reading this novel quickly, rather than being bogged down by details that result in confusion or distraction. I read the novel in 15 weeks in a class at UC Berkeley, and have concluded that it must be read twice--once, to understand the plot and big ideas, and a second time to linger over the concepts that piqued one's interest the most. However, even if only reading it once, it is worth an investment of one's time and emotion.

my favorite book.......2006-02-15

so i was a berkeley english major who needed a class....i just happend to wander into a course on Proust.

it is my favorite book.

it is not light reading, it is for those who want to expericence one of the great novels in the cannon.

I ended up reading the first three volumes.
Swans way left me with satisfation. It is a senory trip in which insecurities and obession exsist without judment. It deals with much of the human psyche in all its forms.

As a lower income Latino male i could still find the univerals truths that bond me to other works that are outside of my personal experience.

It is a work that exsist outside of time, in constant senory experience.

Read it... then reread it.

Learning to swim-- my first Proust reading experience.......2005-10-21

Some time ago, I received the Vintage three-volume box set version of Remembrance as a gift. I had rashly mentioned to a friend that I wanted to read Proust and he took me at my word-- the heavy set arriving by mail and scaring me half to death. It took me a long time to get around to reading it, but I finally summoned up my courage and took down the first volume.

I have many thoughts on the books, and the experience of reading them was not always easy. I will summarize, however, by saying that I believe that I was amply rewarded for making the time and space free to tackle this piece.

It took me quite a while to let myself get into the prose. Although I found it immediately beautiful, haunting even, I struggled over the long complex sentences and the unusual structure. The only advice that I can give to the potential first-time reader is to stop trying to catch everything and let yourself swim along. Eventually if you stop fighting the structure, it really starts to work and you are drawn along with it to the point where you no longer experience it as difficult.

Where is the reward for the reader? There is a passage in the book where Proust is discussing how time flows in any given life. He argues that in order to capture time passing, the novelist generally is given to "wildly accelerating the beat of the pendulum, to transport the reader in a couple of minutes over ten, or twenty, or even thirty years." What I found the most amazing on my first reading of Swann's Way and Within a Budding Grove was that remarkable sense of time in life that Proust is able to portray. He uses more than the wild leaps and jumps that he attributes to his generic novelist. He condenses time, extends it, shortens it and rearranges it. The array of memories along this life is beautiful, and the more beautiful for being so clearly anchored in a particular place in the life of the characters. I am not sure where he is going with all these people-- I will need to read the other books to find out. Still, I was actually content with these two books as a separate reading experience for this element of time passing alone.

I think that on balance if I had bought these books for myself, I would have chosen the Lydia Davis translation. This is based on conversations with friends who were reading the Davis translation at the same time that I was reading this edition. It sounds as though it is fresher, and more readable. However, I found this edition much more accessible than I had feared. Either the Montcrief edition has much less gingerbread prose than generally held, or Kilmarten really did a remarkable job of smoothing it out. I needed to arm myself with a dictionary while reading, since the two of them used some very obscure and/or archaic vocabulary. Although this was occasionally annoying, there were also times when I felt as though less specificity would have hurt the images that were being described.

Recommended, but not lightly.

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Swann's Way: A Life in Song
Donald Swann
Manufacturer: Trafalgar Square Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Swann's Way (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics)

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Notes on this particular edition

Swann's Way (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics)
Marcel Proust
Manufacturer: Barnes & Noble Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1593083777

Book Description

Swann’s Way is the first novel of Marcel Proust’s seven-volume magnum opus À la rechercheé du temps perdu, or Remembrance of Things Past. Following Charles Swann’s opening ruminations about the nature of sleep is one of twentieth-century literature’s most famous and influential scenes: the eating of the madeleine soaked in a “decoction of lime-flowers,” the associative act from which the remainder of the narrative unfurls. After elaborate reminiscences about Swann’s childhood in Paris and rural Combray, Proust describes his protagonist’s exploits in nineteenth-century privileged Parisian society and his obsessive love for young socialite Odette de Crécy.
Filled with searing, insightful, and humorous criticisms of French society, this novel showcases Proust’s innovative prose style, characterized by lengthy, intricate sentences that elongate, stop, and reverse time. With narration that alternates between first and third person, Swann’s Way unconventionally introduces Proust’s recurring themes of memory, love, art, and the human experience—and for nearly a century readers have deliciously savored each moment.

“Scarcely anyone so stimulates the nerves of language in me,” wrote the novelist Virginia Woolf, who idolized Proust, “it becomes an obsession.”
Swann’s Way, as well as the longer novel of which it is part, is framed as a search for time—lost time. Time is the element of life, the medium of all experience, and yet it destroys us and all that we value.
—from the Introduction by Elizabeth Dalton

Customer Reviews:

Notes on this particular edition.......2007-04-15

Obviously Swanns Way is an undisputed classic, but there are a few problems with the "Barnes and Noble Classics" edition. First, there is of course the issue of translation. B & N use the somewhat antiquated C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation, which has its flaws. A review of Montcrieff's edition by Joseph Collins in the New York Times, which is contained in the B & N edition, gives the translation a pretty glowing review: "Ezra Pound...said of one of the books of M. Proust: '...There is work for a master stylist in turning Proust into English; a subtile, uncreative temperament might make a career of this translation.' The mast stylist has been found in Mr. C.K. Scott Moncrieff." Is Mr. Collins correct? Perhaps, perhaps not. Certainly Moncrieff captures the slow, subtle, diaphanous texture of Proust's writing, but a lot of his usage is just plain old and fails to resonate. That beings said, it's not as though the translation is altogether bad. It's still Proust, so it's still incredibly poignant.
Also, I have a few issues with the actual composition of the Barnes and Noble Classics Edition, particularly the back cover. Obviously this is rather unimportant in the abstract, but the back cover synopsis is completely riddled with factual errors. Whoever wrote it apparently confused Proust's narrator with Swann himself, so we get a completely skewed assessment of the plot. This of course has very little bearing on the story itself, but it's completely unprofessional.
Actually, that's really my only other complaint. The rest of the novel is put together pretty nicely, and the Renoir painting on the front is kind of nice, I guess.
That being said, I would still hasten to recommend a newer translation to anyone who feels at all inclined to read Proust at a more cursory capacity, without having to wade through some rather obsolete verbiage. Thankfully there are a lot of good alternative editions on Amazon.

The bottom line, though, is that everyone should read Proust, by any means necessary. Where drama is concerned, we recognize Shakespeare as the best of the form, and in that sense so should we regard Proust as the supreme novelist. Nobody beats him.

The Way by Swann's (In Search of Lost Time, Volume 1)

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The Way by Swann's

The Way by Swann's (In Search of Lost Time, Volume 1)
Marcel Proust
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Sodom and Gomorrah (In Search of Lost Time, Volume 4)
The Prisoner and The Fugitive (In Search of Lost Time, Volume 5)
Finding Time Again (In Search of Lost Time 6)
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (In Search of Lost Time)
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 2 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

ASIN: 0141180315

Customer Reviews:

The Way by Swann's.......2005-04-24

This is the British paperback of "The Way by Swann's," which in the U.S. hardcover edition is called "Swann's Way." The translator is the American short-story writer (and MacArthur "genius" award-winner) Lydia Davis, who has done a superlative job of translating the first volume of Proust's masterwork. I have reviewed it at greater length on the page devoted to the hardcover edition. Personally, I think that these volumes are for the ages, and I want a permanent copy for my library. But if your wants are more transient, this is the edition to get. -- Dan Ford

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Swan's Way
Henri Raczymow
Manufacturer: Northwestern University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

French | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Rarely has anyone taken Swann's Way down a stranger path, and never with such intriguing results. What begins as a meditation on the fictional identity of the elegant "swan" of Proust's In Search of Lost Time becomes, through a series of turns and twists, an ingenious investigation of the character's real-life counterpart, Charles Haas. Part novel, part essay, part literary sleuthing, Swan's Way is a critical tour de force.

Through an inspired reading of Proust's text, Henri Raczymow gradually unravels the multiple contradictions of Charles Swann's personality, brought into focus by the fault lines in Proust's narrative method. The author traces Swann's evolution and the multiple ways in which his Jewish identity keeps peeping through the veneer of respectability of this sophisticated dandy. Through a parallel inquiry into the history of the Jockey Club--to which Haas, a Jew, was, like Swann, exceptionally admitted--and the transformation of the German-Jewish Haas into the fashionable British Swann, Swan's Way evolves into an examination of the question of personal identity and posthumous survival. Haas's Jewish identity is the invisible thread that guides Raczymow through the maze of Proust's work, which serves as a backdrop against which fin de siècle French society enacts the ugly drama of anti-Semitism. Blurring the boundaries between life and fiction, Swan's Way leads the reader ever deeper into the unresolved question of literary and personal character.

A Way out of No Way: Changing Family and Freedom in the New South (The American South Series)

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A Way out of No Way: Changing Family and Freedom in the New South (The American South Series)
Dianne, Swann-Wright
Manufacturer: University Press of Virginia
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

African-American & Black | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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General | Americas | History | Subjects | Books

Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

Slavery & Emancipation | World | History | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0813921376

Book Description

Using the experiences of her own family of freed slaves, the author looks at relations between plantation owners and their slaves after emancipation, how African Americans made a new life as employees and landowners as Piedmont Virginia entered the twentieth century.

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Swann's Way
Marcel Proust
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GLDKG4

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