Finding Time Again

My intrepid book club of four stalwart women has been reading Proust for over a year now. While our other members have fallen away for one reason or another (some aghast at what we've undertaken), the four of us have moved steadily through the volumes of "In Search of Lost Time," sometimes with difficulty, always with admiration for this incredible writer and his accomplishment.

After reading volume one, "Swann's Way," we decided to go on to volume two. And then we couldn't quit. We aren't all in the same place or even the same volume, but that's part of the beauty of the series: It repeats its themes over and over, so it doesn't really matter where you are.

When I went to purchase volume four, "Sodom and Gomorrah," the bookstore clerk congratulated me. Most people quit after the first or second volume, he said. Volumes five and six of the Penguin Classics series aren't even available in the US.

I'm now embarking on the final volume, "Finding Time Again" -- and "embark" does describe the lilting, meandering journey, as if over an ocean or a great body of water, that one takes with any one of the volumes.

In volume five's, "The Fugitive," Proust surprises readers with several surprising turns of event (which we didn't discuss in our group last month because some members were still reading "Sodom and Gomorrah"). In the beginning of volume six, Proust reflects on a journal by the Goncourts, pressed on him by a friend, that recounts a dinner at the Verdurin salon, a group "Marcel" has visited many times, and describes people Marcel has also socialized with and written about.

Proust/Marcel comments, wryly, that he doesn't have a good eye for detail, like the Goncourts. Ironic, because he notes in minute detail and at great length such dinner parties and the people who frequent them. Then he qualifies his statement: He isn't interested in exterior details; he's blind to such details. Instead, what he notes is the undercurrent that is particularly meaningful to his view of the world.

Which is why we love Proust. It isn't just the detail in his beautifully crafted and patiently spun out writing, but rather the reaching down to things beneath the surface, even things which, in their strangeness, we can't quite grasp (like his contrarian views on love).