If you’ve studied literature or are a bibliophile, chances are you’ve heard the name Proust and maybe even know what he’s famous for: his multi-volume novel In Search of Lost Time, which totals an appalling 4,200 pages. So I’ve been curious about old Marcel for a number of years now but never read him - until now. And: never again! Proust is… ghastly! Ugh, what a horrid chore to slog through this garbage heap of a book!
Swann in Love is apparently “the perfect introduction to Proust” (it must be true, it’s in the title!), which is a more-or-less self-contained chunk taken out of the first volume in the saga, Swann’s Way. It’s about Proust’s protagonist Charles Swann (a thinly-fictionalised version of the author) falling in and out of love with a woman called Odette - and that’s basically it.
What you expect to find in a romance story is here: the courtship, the joy, the cooling-down over time, arguments, break-up, making-up, and so on. It’s a very ordinary and unremarkable story. Rubbish, boring story aside, what’ll really send you to sleep is Proust’s abominable prose. Multi-clause, double-barrelled, never-ending sentences that sprawl across the page like visual migraines that form paragraphs, sometimes even half the sodding page! He’s not even saying anything interesting - it’s usually just random waffling about nothing inserted into a description of a banal action that didn’t need to be described to begin with!
“Witty” (thanks again to the ad copy for that one) this ain’t; tedious doesn’t even cover it. You’ll need the patience of several saints to claw your way through one insufferable page after another.
I sometimes talk to my dad about books. What’s odd is that he never recalls anything that happens in them. If we’ve read the same book, I’ll mention some scenes or characters and then he’ll remember but he doesn’t recall them independently. I asked him why and he says that he doesn’t really care about story - he reads purely for language.
And I’m sure he’s not the only nutter like this. Just knowing that there are lifelong readers who view novels so differently from me - who reads for entertainment so that narrative is central to my enjoyment of a book - perhaps explains the reputation of writers like Proust. I despised the prose but maybe to someone who reads exclusively for complex and elaborate sentence structure, baby it’s the best? Those are literally the only people I see getting anything out of this and any other book by Proust.
All I can say is that I’m glad I finally experienced Proust but that I can confidently state that I will never, ever, everrrrr read any more, let alone the entirety, of In Search of Lost Time. Maybe if you’re a literary masochist like me, then Swann in Love might be the one to read (it’s a quarter of the length of Swann’s Way), but know that you’re only letting yourself in for an incredibly frustrating and trying experience. I don’t think it’s worth it. You can live your whole life without inflicting Proust onto yourself. It’ll be a better life too.
Oh thank god it’s all over!
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