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Sigh, oh, that lovely passage in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time when he writes of diesel exhaust…

Any suggestions for “the good part” in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time? Just kidding ;-)

More readable than In Search of Lost Time by Proust :)

> just read _War and Peace_ or _In Search of Lost Time_, for example

These are excellent well-contrasting examples, well put.

> A fractally complex journey, but a journey nonetheless.

Do you write frequently? This is one of my favorite comments on HN in terms of style and etiquette.

One summer in high school I decided to read In Search of Lost Time before school started up again.

I only made my way through Swann's Way (the first of seven books in the series), but I'm so glad I did. I think it was probably the toughest piece of literature I'd ever read, but one of the most rewarding by far.

Andrei Bely. Nabokov considered Petersburg one of the top four novels of the century (his other three were Ulysses, The Metamorphosis and In Search Of Lost Time).

What was it said that "Life is too short, and Proust is too long?"

I am not allergic to long books--I did read In Search of Lost Time through to the end--but I'd like a glimmer of interest somewhere along the way. It doesn't sound as if most of the reviewers found that.

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust and the short stories of Borges

There is a reason why he is described as one of the greatest novelist that ever lived. I'm reading through In Search of Lost Time and just the simplicity of the writing, exploring some of the most seemingly banal aspects of human nature, is astounding. I do wish I knew French; I can only imagine what the original manuscript must feel like.

In Search of Lost Time. It's definitely famous and well-known, but I think it's far more talked about than actually read. Proust is a philosopher and psychologist more than a novelist, and large chunks of the book are basically just philosophical essays, but its still probably the greatest novel I've read. I think it's one of the greatest achievement of the human mind to date and it has more to say about the human experience than anything since, as far as I can tell.

I often hear people boasting about their "speed reading" skills and then I ask them what sort of books they read, turns out speed reading and having "good retention rate" is easy if you're reading crap. I could also speed read Clive Cussler, Stephen King, and JK Rowling.

I love Philosophy and classic literature and I've yet to meet anyone that's managed to speed read Proust's "In Search of Lost Time", and then tell give me a detailed description of the plot, themes, artistic merit, and so on. Similarly with books like Ulysses. There's no possible way to speed read that book because it's so rich with allusions, references to religion, art, mythology, and philosophy. If you tried to "speed read" it, you would be missing half the point of reading it in the first place.

Reading great books isn't about numbers, you don't get rewarded for how many classics you read in a year. Reading great books is about slowly absorbing all the riches inside, something that just cannot happen if you're rushing. I've read The Brothers Karamazov and The Magic Mountain 4 or 5 times and each time I learn something new and gain a deeper understanding of psychology and life. I find it more rewarding to read and re-read the classics slowly, writing notes, using a critical guide (or book of companion essays), than smashing through as many crappy novels or modern popular non-fiction books (The Power of Now of any of Malcom Gladwells books are typical fodder for todays readers).

Marcel Proust wrote a profound series of books that investigates memory, personal change, and the subjective feeling of time called, "In Search of Lost Time." He had an exceptional memory and recalls his own perceptive and idiosyncratic feelings starting from early childhood. Some of his observations are universal though, and you'll be delighted when he helps you remember them for yourself.

Bredin's 1983 The Affair is really seen as the most thorough account. My favourite reading of the affair is actually In Search of Lost Time, as Proust shows the split in society during this period over the second and third (perhaps the fourth too I think?) volumes.

I'm halfway through the last volume of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, and I admit I'm proud of it. I don't know what can be said in a small space about a novel so large and canonical, but I've deeply enjoyed it. An unexpected quirk of the novel is that though I've been heavily absorbed in it the whole way, and found it moving, funny, and in general a complete literary experience, I can't really recommend it to others without absurd sounding qualifiers, e.g., "As long as you can put up with hundreds of pages on end of detailed descriptions of things like churches, landscapes, flowers, parties, dinners, families, manners, morals, and the like, you'll find it immeasurably beautiful and immediately personally meaningful!" --where I'd of course have never previously taken that bait.

"If you read a novel in more than two weeks you don’t read the novel really."

Then who but academics--or maybe graduate students--can read War and Peace, The Man Without Qualities, In Search of Lost Time (or really, most of its constituent books), Moby Dick, etc.?

And I can imagine being "partial" to calling myself a reader, but "amicable" seems the wrong word.

I wasn't familiar with the term, but Wiktionary has some good hints:

n. A small gateau or sponge cake, often shaped like an elongated scallop shell.

n. Something which brings back a memory; a source of nostalgia or evocative memories (used with reference to its function in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time).

Good choice, Nabokov placed Kafka's Metamorphosis second only to Ulysses as a 20th century novel (as of 1965):

http://lib.ru/NABOKOW/Inter05.txt

My greatest masterpieces of twentieth century prose are,
in this order: Joyce's Ulysses, Kafka's Transformation, Biely's Petersburg, and the first half of Proust's fairy tale In Search of Lost Time.

While we're on the subject of modernist literature, I would suggest taking a look at In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. It's quite a bit longer than Ulysses, at about 1.5 million words, but I find it really fascinating. The flow of his words, to me, seems almost musical.

However, I'd like to also point out that you shouldn't read ISoLT or Ulysses or any other book for that matter, just for the sake of saying that you were able to read it. I think that you lose the depth, the meaning of the words when you read to "show off". You "read" the book, the words flowed into your brain, but did you really understand what the author said?

Unfortunately, I think modernist literature is often susceptible to "half readers", where people start the book, but never finish it. Modernist style can seem pretty alien to some people (Background, as jseliger pointed out, is also important to understanding the "meaning".) As Wikipedia puts it:

>"For the first-time reader, modernist writing can seem frustrating to understand because of the use of a fragmented style and a lack of conciseness. Furthermore the plot, characters and themes of the text are not always presented in a linear way. The goal of modernist literature is also not particularly focused on catering to one particular audience in a formal way. In addition modernist literature often forcefully opposes, or gives an alternative opinion, on a social concept."

In search of lost time, by Marcel Proust.

I've had it on my shelf for a while.

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, because he shows that there's writing after Dostoyevsky, and because he probably was a hacker.

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

I remember having to read Proust's In Search of Lost Time in school when I was something like 16-17 years old. I remember the book as excruciatingly boring. It's a small book and I used whole two weeks to read it because of that and went away from it with no takeaway whatsoever.

I blame it on the school program. Perhaps we were too young to appreciate it at that age, perhaps the approach was upside-down: we first had to read a book w/o any guidance, and then we'd discuss it.

Yes, the title "In Search of Lost Time" became popular when D.J. Enright revised the previous English translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, which were titled Remembrance of Things Past. ("Remembrance of Things Past" came from Shakespeare's Sonnet 30, "In Search of Lost Time" being a literal translation of the original French title.) Pretty much all the English translations are based off of Moncrieff's work.

There's also a new re-translation being done by Penguin; only the first four are out, the rest are supposed to be out in 2018(?). I think the delay is due to some of the volumes being under copyright still.

I'm on a David Foster Wallace kick right now: Working through The Pale King, his collected essays and his short stories. Already read Infinite Jest. It's hard to say what qualifies as "essential reading" when it's impossible for a human being to read even one tenth of the great, all-time classic books. There just isn't enough time. My advice would be to read at least a few books that have reputations for being difficult. War and Peace, Gravity's Rainbow, In Search of Lost Time, Ulysses, etc. (The reason I'm only listing near-undisputed classics here is because these books are difficult, and in some cases very, very long [looking at you, Proust], and the assurance that it is all worth it helps you keep going when your brain hurts.) These books survived despite their difficulty because reading them is a mind-expanding, sometimes life-changing experience. Reading shouldn't be essentially passive.

Keep it simple: be intentional, and practice. Get in the habit of reading long-form works on a regular cadence. You don't need to hoist Proust's In Search of Lost Time into your lap, pen in hand, ready to take notes in the margins. Just grab something interesting to you that you can engage with and be stimulated by. Play some classical or other instrumental music in the background if you prefer. If you have thoughts about the work as you're reading, jot them down and follow up with them later. The point is to make a concerted effort to tune everything else out except the work and your thoughts about it--you can stop to look around the scenery but don't ever take your foot off the gas.

> Much of what can be said about CS in the UK is true of the "technical middle class" in general.

Going on a tangent here, but I observed the same thing while reading Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" when I was in high-school (20+ years ago), i.e. that the "technical middle class" and even the "technical upper class" of late 19th century France were way below the aristocracy of that time.

A respected engineer who had graduated from the "École des mines" and who might have even held a job as a Government minister had no chance to attend the parties hosted by the duchesse de Guermantes. Things might have changed in the meantime, though.