Proustian Uncertainties: On Reading and Rereading In Search of Lost Time by Saul Friedländer - 2020

 

Proustian Uncertainties: On Reading and Rereading In Search of Lost Time by Saul Friedländer - 2020

Proustian Uncertaiainties: On Reading and Rereading In Search of Lost Time by Saul Friedländer is  book that anyone who has read and seen the greatness of Marcel Proust’s in Search of Lost Time will find fascinating.   The author is attempting to understand the relationship between the narrator of the work and Proust himself.  It is also an exploration of the challenges of just keeping as much of this giant work in your consciousness as you can.  

From his concluding remarks you can sense and for most readers identify with the concerns of Friedläder:

“Each of us, In Search readers, returns to some haunting episodes again and again, and for each of us they may be different. But at some stage we all have to make an effort to remember that it’s not Proust’s story that we follow but that of his Narrator. And yet we sense that as we are enthralled by the unfolding of that life’s description, we recognize a deep layer of authenticity. We can even identify what the author doesn’t want to tell us, or, some other time, what he doesn’t want to tell but hopes that some readers will uncover. It is on that search of the Search that this essay is based. Of course, many questions raised in our text have remained unanswered, but hopefully at least a few may have received some further emphasis.”

There are three central issues explored in looking at the relationship of the Narrator’s self presentation and what Friedländer tells us of the life of Proust.  Friedländer draws on numerous French and English sources but he does draw heavily from Wayne C. Carter’s biography.  Here is an important quote 

“William C. Carter’s more recent biography offers a very nuanced assessment of the proximity between author and Narrator: “In his letters and notes to himself about the novel, Proust usually spoke of the Narrator as ‘I,’ making no distinction between engaged not in writing his autobiography but in creating a novel in which there are strong autobiographical elements. The symbiosis between Proust and his Narrator can be explained by the hybrid origin of the story. Having begun as an essay in which the ‘I’ was himself, as the text veered more and more toward fiction, the ‘I’ telling the story became both its generator and its subject, like a Siamese twin, intimately linked to Proust’s body and soul and yet other” (Carter, Marcel Proust: A Life, 474). Further on in the biography, Carter adds an important comment: “As Proust lived more and more in the world he invented, he came to embody the Narrator rather than the other way around”

There are three central themes explored.  One is the relationship of the Narrator to his mother as this reflects and differs from Proust’s relationship to his own mother.  Friedländer insightfully talks about the Narrator’s longing for a goodnight kiss from his mother.  We are given sufficient biographical data to sharpen our focus.  

Proust never in his own life hid his homosexuality. The Narrator is not a homosexual.  There are several female romantic interests that take up a lot of space in the novel.  There is a lesbian relationship and a prominent gay character.  Friedländer speculates that Proust might have thought that if the narrator identifies as Gay censors and conservative readers might be displeased.  I am not, for what it worth, convinced fully of this but a number of interesting questions are raised.

A big open question for Friedländer is the question of Jewish identity of the Narrator versus Proust himself.  There are anti-Semitic characters in the novel, Friedländer talks about the Dreyfus question in the novel and in the Paris of Proust.

Proustian Uncertainties: On Reading and Rereading In Search of Lost Time by Saul Friedländer added to my understanding of the novel and of

Proust.  I think anyone who has read the novel, especially rereaders, will have wondered what forces shaped the work and the author.

SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER is an award-winning Israeli-American historian and currently a professor of history (emeritus) at UCLA. He was born in Prague to a family of German-speaking Jews, grew up in France, and lived in hiding during the German occupation of 1940–1944. His historical works have received great praise and recognition, including the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945.

From the publisher’s website - Other Press

“[A] haunting work…Friedländer has always imbued his scholarship with an acute literary sensibility…incisive and quizzical…[an] intimate and subtle book.” —Wall Street Journal

“[A] superb new book…Friedländer, the great historian of Nazi Germany and the Jews and also the author of his own Proustian memoir, When Memory Comes, argues that Proust’s narrator is a ‘disembodied presence unlike that in any novel before,’ and that it’s the relation of that presence to Proust himself that makes the Recherche, with its biting social satire, so unique.” —Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year

“The pleasure of [Proustian Uncertainties] comes from…the author unspooling thoughts and venturing theories collected over many years about a book he clearly loves…By taking a bird’s-eye view of the novel, Friedländer notices continuities and contradictions that are hard to see from within the teeming thickets of Proust’s prose.” —Harper’s

“[An] excellent volume about In Search of Lost Time and Proust himself.” —Literary Hub

https://otherpress.com/product/proustian-uncertainties-9781590519110/reviews/#content

Mel u

The Reading Life

Lost Times - Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp by Józef Czafski -translated and introduced. by Eric Karpeles - 2018

Paris in July 2018

Proust on The Reading Life

Paris in July hosted by Thyme for Tea is a great event.  I Focus on literary works and nonfiction but you are invited to share your thoughts and experience on anything Paris related, from a great recipe, a favourite movie set in Paris, mine is Ninotchka, an account of your stay in Paris.  I hope lots of people  participate. Just be sure and link you post on The event home page.  

Józef Czapski

Born April 3, 1896 in Prague into an aristocrstic family

Dies January 12, 1993 in Maisions-Laffitte, France

He was an author, critic and painter

1917 he moved to Poland

1924 moves to Paris

1932 returns to Poland

1939 - while serving as an officer in Polish Army he was captured by Russians and sent to a Gulag prison camp.   He and his fellow officers, in order to keep up morale and promote unity began to give lectures to fellow prisoners.  Czapski knew Proust and French literature intimately, working purely from memories he gave a series of lectures on In Search of Lost Times.  

1945 he returns to Paris and becomes involved in a circle of Polish artists and mingles with French Cultural luminaries.

He remains a resident of Paris from then on

(Drawn from several online sources and the introduction of Eric Karpeles)

Czapski was very much a Parisian, after his return to Paris he continued reading in Proust.  

““Lost Time is a transcription of the talks he gave about Proust to his fellow officers. Having read À la Recherche in French, he strove to recall it in French, and so gave his talks in French. Two friends from among the assembled listeners agreed to transcribe his talks some time after the lectures had been given to the larger group. Czapski dictated an abridged version to these two scribes. “In our canteen, in the great monastery’s refectory stinking of dirty dishes and cabbage, I dictated part of these lectures under the watchful eye of a politruk [a roving Soviet informer] who suspected us of writing something politically treasonous.” Technically speaking, the book in your hand was not written by Józef Czapski.”  From The Introduction

Eric Karpeles has given the Anglophone literary world access to Czapski’s lectures.  As he says the magnificence of Czapski’s lectures is in letting us see how his memories of Proust’s masterpiece kept him whole during a period of terrible darkness.  In the horrors of the camp knowing humanity had produced such a work helped sustain his will “Freezing, exhausted from overwork, on the brink of starvation, the men hardly thought of themselves as survivors. Referred to by the camp administration as “former officers of the former Polish army,” they struggled to keep their spirits alive and their morale strong, actively resisting the ceaseless attempt to break them down and convert them to the Bolshevik cause. To inspire positive thinking in the face of such relentless misery, the men devised an ongoing series of talks to be given in the evenings before bunking down, each speaker choosing a subject dear to his heart. History, geography, architecture, sport, and ethnography were among the offerings by specialists and amateurs in their respective fields.”

It was very moving to me to imagine the Polish officers, filthy, hungry and knowing the Russians could kill them at anytime eagerly assembling to hear Czapski’s lectures. This is truly a book about the 

strength reading great works of literature can give those devoted to them.

Proust is, of course, in part a reflection on memory.  I loved these lines from the introduction by Karpeles:

““Opening his mind to the narrative’s flow, whole scenes from Proust’s novel eventually resurfaced, in many instances nearly verbatim. Pulling passages out of thin air, Czapski re-enacted the very endeavor of À la Recherche. “After a certain length of time,” he wrote,” facts and details emerge on the surface of our consciousness which we had not the slightest idea were filed away somewhere in our brain”

I will give Czapski the last words:

“And Proust ends with a sublimely poetic sentence which I’m incapable of repeating to you word for word: “And all night, in all the illuminated windows of the bookshops of Paris, his books, open three by three, kept vigil like angels with their wings unfurled over the body of the dead writer.” The death of Bergotte and the long illness that precedes it is forever tied in my memory to the death of Proust.”

I think all lovers of Proust will adore this book. It should be added to list of all serious readers of French literature. Even if you have not yet completed your first read of Prousf this is a tremendously informative book.  

Here is a link to a wonderful article by William Friedkin on his attempt to follow Proust’s footsteps in Paris

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/t-magazine/william-friedkin-marcel-proust.html

A Fellow of the Czeslaw Milosz Institute at the Claremont Colleges, Eric Karpeles has given the Amon Carter Lecture on the Arts at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, worked as a volunteer ambulance driver, spoken on Proust at Berkeley and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, walked from Bath to Oxford, interviewed composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim onstage, and collaborated on a book of mathematical equations and Hebrew references used as a prop in a film by the Coen Brothers.

Karpeles studied at the Art Students League of New York as a boy and was awarded a residency at the Cité des Arts in Paris as a young man. A voracious reader whose idea of hell is being on public transportation without a book, he likes to cook, or, perhaps more tellingly, he likes to eat. He once had tea with Indira Gandhi and has lived with the same man for forty years.  

From https://www.erickarpeles.com

I was kindly given a review copy of this book.

Mel u

O

Proust The Search by Benjamin Taylor (2016, from The Yale Jewish Lives Series) Plus suggestions on other books on Proust

Marcel Proust on The Reading Life

In The Guardian's luke warm review of Proust The Search by Benjamin Taylor it is suggested 

that the big question on Proust Taylor addresses  is "How did a simpering, high-class layabout write a work of such profound moral seriousness?"  This for me pretty much wrecked the book.

I am currently doing my third read through of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Times.  Wayne Carter, the greatest living authority on Proust, is producing, published by Yale University Press, heavily annotated with illuminating data, a revision of the great translation of F. Scott Charles Moncreiff.  I was kindly given an advanced review copy of Volume One which I posted on last year and am now reading a review copy of volume two.  

The standard biographies of Marcel Proust are huge, pushing 1000 pages.  Taylor's sort of biography is just over 200 pages.  Taylor has two basic objectives.  The first is a task he acknowledges as impossible, explaining how Proust's life experiences lead to him producing one of the the very greatest novels ever written, a supreme artistic achievement of the human spirit.  Taylor somehow buys into the notion that because Proust was gay he was of weak character, lacking in the strength to produce a 3500 page masterpiece.  This notion permeates  Taylor's account of the life of Proust.  Taylor also tries  to place Proust in the European Jewish tradition.   Proust's father was Christian, his mother Jewish.  I did not find this tremendously interesting and I think it is counterproductive to limit Proust like this.

Taylor goes into detail on Proust's romantic life with various young men and what Taylor sees, probably rightly, as "cover" relationships with women in his younger days.  It is not pleasant to learn what Proust liked to do at a gay brothel he might have provided start up money for, Proust inherited in today's money five millions dollars from his mother.  Taylor lets us see that Proust was not money smart but was blessed with a good money manager.  He sometimes bought stocks because he liked the company name.  He was a very generous tipper and gave large gifts.  

My thoughts on getting into Proust (check out on YouTube the hilarious Monty Python skit on Proust)

First to state the obvious, read Proust.  It will take awhile, it is very, seven volumes over 3500 pages in most editions, long but it is not "difficult" or hard to follow.  (There is an interesting scene in Taylor's book describing a meeting of Proust and James Joyce.)  I read tne Moncreiff translations but will eventually read newer translations.  Next I would suggest you read Wayne Carter's biography of Proust.  

I have read two good secondary books on Proust.  Roger Shatluck's Proust's Way A Field Guide to Remebrance of Things Past is a work I found interesting and useful.  

Anka Mulstein's Proust's Library is super interesting.

Taylor does talk a good bit about Proust's reading.  He loved The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky.  I must read it again.

On Taylor's book, it is for Proust fanatics only.  There is enough detail to keep readers like me interested but most will be better served by following my suggestions.  

Taylor is an adjunct professor at Columbia University and I guess this book started out as class room lectures and Taylor felt a need to base his work on things young students who most likely have never read Proust could relate to, him being Jewish and Gay.  It was near offensive when Taylor suggested it was surprising when Proust, who joined the military to get his choice of where he would be trained knowing he would be drafted, liked the army and was considered a good soldier.  

Mel u

Monsieur Proust's Library by Anka Muhlstein (2012, 161 pages)

My recent reading of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (sometimes translated as Remembrance of Things Past) was one of the greatest experiences of my life.  I will very soon begin again.   As I read through I thought that this might be the ultimate book about people who lead reading centered lives.  Everyone reads in the world of Proust.  I loved it when Princess Guermantes said there was nothing better in life than reading.    Anka Muhlstein in her short very pleasant highly cultured book, Monsieur Proust's Library helped me to understand how classic French literature helps structure the novel and she also lets us know a lot about the writers that Proust most admired.

Among English writers he loved Robert Louis Stevenson, George Elliot,and above all Thomas Hardy.

The most mentioned writer in In Search of Lost Time is Honore de Balzac. Refrences to Balzac permeate the work.  People have extended conversations about Balzac and relate events in their own world to La Comedie Humaine.  One glaring difference between Proust and Balzac is that if a character in one of Balzac's works is rich, he explains how they got rich in detail.  In Proust we don't find this. 

We also learn of the great importance of Racine and Baudlieire to Proust and his novel.  

We learn the Proustian difference between good and bad readers.  One intriguing chapter is devoted to the "homosexual" reader.  

In the closing lines of the book, I was deeply impacted and knew she was very right when Muhlstein said one of the meaning of a search for lost memories was in a rediscovery of old books.  

I really am glad I read this book.  I strongly endorse it to all readers of Proust.  It is very much worth reading and is itself a work of art.   By all means read Proust first. 

Muhlstein has a book on Balzac and I hope to read that soon.

Ms Muhlstein gave a very illuminating lecture centering on the influence of Balzac on Proust which can be heard here

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-3vdn9WC3js

Anka Muhlstein was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1996 for her biography of Astolphe de Custine, and has twice received the History Prize of the French Academy. Her books include 
Balzac’s Omelette and, most recently, Monsieur Proust’s Library. From the NYRB webpage.

Chasing Lost Time - The Life of C. K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy, and Translator by Jean Findlay

Chasing Lost Time The Life of C. K. Scott Moncrieff by Jean Findlay is a wonderful book.  I loved it. It was just a tremendous pleasure and very edifying and enriching work.  

I feel a great sense of gratitude to Jean Findlay, grand niece of C. K. Scott Moncrieff, for having written this great biography.  I feel an even greater sense of gratitude to Moncrieff for having translated Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (sometimes translated as In Search of Lost Time.) Reading it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.  

Moncrieff (born 1889 Scotland, died 1930 Rome) began to love literature at a very early age, learning Greek and Latin in school, as was customary and largely teaching himself French and Italian.

I think and hope this book will get a lot of attention and be widely read in literate circles for many years.

Findlay has a deep empathy for her great uncle and the advantage of access to family members and friends.

Here are some of the things that readers of this book will appreciate, I think.

Moncrieff was openly gay, in an era when homosexual acts were punishable by prison.  He hid his sexual identity only when he feared the laws. Moncrieff's family when he was in college constantly invited pretty girls to family parties hoping he would be interested.  He had many women friends but his sexual and romantic interest was only in other men.  We learn a lot about gay literary life in Scotland, England, World War One in France, and later in Italy.  Moncrieff was friends with figures like E. F. Forester, Robert Graves, and loved Wilfred Owens.  Findlay tells us Moncrieff would sometimes take a short break from translating and write obscene homoerotic limericks.  Moncrieff took no shame in his sexual orientation though he was discrete when he needed to be.  He had a very active sex life with partners ranging from literary aristocrats to rent  boys in Roman back alleys.   I don't think Findlay meant to but her book is an important contribution to literary gay studies but it is. She does say one thing which kind of made me hesitate when she suggested that Moncrieff was a paradox in that he was a courageous leader in Trench Warfare in W W One, very fit but was also, in her words, "a Pansy".  Hopefully one day people won't see being gay and being courageous underfire in battle as something that needs to be reconciled.  I do not think Findlay means to use the term "pansy" in a perjorative way but to convey that Moncrieff was openly and happily gay.  Moncrieff was unashamed of his sexuality and took great pleasure in it. 

A lot of very interesting space is devoted to Moncrieff's experiences in the trenches in France in WWI.  He was a front line trench officer. Trench warfare was terribly vicious and conditions horrible.  He received medals for his bravery and his men greatly respected him. He basically survived the war because right before the events

like the battle of Somme began, he had a  leg broken twice by friendly fire.  He got out just before millions were killed.  He spent several months in a hospital back in England and was lucky not to lose his leg.  He did walk with a limp and suffer permanent pain the rest of his life.  We learn of the many famous W W One poets he met, a number of the most famous were also gay.  Even when he is back in London doing office war work, he constantly learns of more and more friends killed.

 C.K. Scott Moncrieff

"Good Grief Dear Boy

All my lovers

Murdered in the trenches

Dirty Huns gunning for beauty

Duty, a madness of

Conformity."

Moncrieff's family was comfortable but not really rich.  We learn a lot about his early years. Moncrieff worked for a while as assistant to the editor of The Times.  

Leaving out a lot, Proust's was coming into print and Moncrieff was contracted to translate it into English.  Sadly he and Proust never met though they did correspond a little about the translation.  There was concern over whether or not the English or American postal censors would allow it (I personally don't see many such persons as getting past the tenth page!) in the country but in the end there were no real problems.  Moncrieff 's translation is considered by many authorities the best literary translation ever.  There is annual prize for translation in his name. His prose is just beyond wonderful.  Findlay  talks  about the claim that Moncrieff's translation is "too flowery".  She dismisses this and convinced me with illustrations comparing his work to new translations.  Proust's narrator spends a lot of time theorizing and speculating  about gay and lesbian sex and this probably deeply impacted Moncrieff.  

Moncrieff got a job as passport officer attached to the British embassy in Rome after the war ended. His real function was to spy on the military build up of fascist Italy.  Moncrieff loved Rome, preferring the Italian food and more sexually open life style of Rome to England.  Moncrieff was very much an art lover.  Even in the war he studied old buildings.  Just like Proust, he loved Venice for the sheer beauty of the city.  He stayed briefly at a Tuscon villa owned by Ruffington Bousweau's grandmother.   Italy was seen as a freer kind of place by many English people from D. H. Lawrence to E. F. Forester and that is how Moncrieff experienced it.  Maybe back in Scotland he would have hesitated to have sex with rent boys in an alley for fear it might be talked about but  in Rome he did not care.  

Moncrieff was a very dedicated family person and helped many of his nephews and niece's with his considerable earnings from translations.  He also wrote a huge number of journalistic pieces, literary reviews and 1000s of letters.  

I did not know that Moncrieff also translated numerous works of Stendhal, including his major novels.  I have already downloaded two of his short Stendhal translations and will read them soon and probably all his Stendhal.  I have read The Red and The Black and The Charter House of Parma in new translations but eagerly look forward to reading Moncrieff's.  

He also translated some  of the works of the Italian Nobel Prize Winner Luigi Pirandello.  I have begun to read one of them already.

(Note- it looks to me like in some countries like Australia, Moncreiff's translations are now in the public domain but in the USA and UK they are under copyright until 2023.  You can download for free all his Proust and Stendhal works if you wish to do so.  I found one of his Pirandello works online.

Moncreiff was very much into the reading life.  As soon as I read he said Balzac's Lost Illusions was the greatest novel he ever read, I started it. He was constantly reading, even in the trenches.  When he learned he did not have long to live (he died  at 41 of stomach cancer) he at once began to read great works of literature he wanted to experience before he died, among them he selected War and Peace, The Golden Dove, and Moby Dick.  Moncrieff loved literature almost above all else.  I imagined his reaction when  Princesses  Geurmantes said the best thing in life is reading great literature.

There is much more in this book than I have mentioned.  The economics of book translation is very well conveyed, for example.

As I finished this book, I let out a silent scream of Joy for having learned so much about the man who brought me Proust.  

I salute and thank Jean Findlay  for this magnificent book.  

For sure I will reread this book, maybe after I reread his Proust and his Stendhal.  

The book is very well documented and there is an excellant bibliography. 

Author data (from Amazon)

JEAN FINDLAY was born in Edinburgh and studied Law and French at Edinburgh University, then theatre in Cracow with Tadeusz Kantor. She ran a theatre company, writing and producing plays in Berlin, Bonn, Dublin, Rotterdam, and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. She has written for the Scotsman, the Independent, Time Out and Performance magazine and lives in London with her husband and three children. She is the great-great-niece of C K Scott Moncrieff.

Mel u

The Reading Life

 

 

 

 

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (1913 to 1927- translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff)

For a while I think I will just be doing short reading journal type of posts. 

Living for a while  in the universe of In Search of Lost Time (sometimes translated as Remembrances  of Things Past) has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. I will begin it all over very soon, a common thing for readers to do.   

Marcel Proust A Life by William C. Carter (2000, with a new preface in the 2013 Edition, 1000 pages)

Marcel Proust A Life by William C. Carter is a wonderfully done amazingly edifying biography.  Marcel Proust (1871 to 1923, Paris) created one of the supreme artistic achievements of all time in his In Search of Lost Time, alternatively translated as Remembrances  of Things Past. 

Proust was a very complicated person with a multitude of sides.  The public image of Proust is that of an effete, almost effeminate snobbish homosexual obsessed with high society and his own health problems with serious mother issues. Carter lets us see that Proust was not effeminate, he enjoyed his time in the French Army and fought in more than one duel.  He satirized snobbish behavior in Parisian high society.  He did have lots of health issues made worse by self medication.  

After reading the biography you will have a very good feel for the life of wealthy gay men in Paris.  Proust had numerous infatuations with handsome younger men, ranging from social aristocrats to waiters.  Proust inherited significant wealth.  He was not a good money manager.  He was a lavish tipper and was, it seems to me, taken advantage of by numerous lovers.  His personal life was very complicated. You will find no deeper reflections on gay life than in Proust.  

A lot of the book is devoted to the difficulties Proust had in getting his huge novel published.  Proust's handwriting was very hard to read and their were many errors in the proofs.  

Proust was forty five when World War One began, the top age to be drafted into the French army, Proust already served during peace time.  Proust sought and obtained a medical waiver but he greatly felt the pain brought to Paris and his circles by the 1,250,000 French soldiers who died during the war. Carter does a wonderful job letting us see how the war impacted Proust.

Proust was the ultimate Parisian.  In the last decade or so of his life he took many of his meals at the ultra-fashionable Ritz Hotel.  I really enjoyed reading about the hotel.  

Carter lets us see, as much as one can, how Proust came to know as much about Paris life as he did, given he often stayed inside for weeks, living a schedule inverted from most.  We learn about the famous cork lined room. We meet lots of famous and infamous people.  We go along to expensive gay brothels.  Carter helps us understand what it meant to be gay in the Paris upper society as well as the demimonde. Proust had numerous infatuations, some seemed very foolish and ill advised.  

Anyone interested in Proust will love this book. It is not a casual read.  There is a tremendous amount to be learned about Parisian society, the business of publishing in France, Gay Paris, parental relationships, the war in Paris and above all the creation of one of the very greatest of all literary works.

I'm including this book as part of my participation in Paris in July, 2014

Mel u

The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust (1920, trans. By C. K. Scott Moncrieff, Vol. III of In Search of Lost Time)

In Search of Lost Time (also referred to as Remembrance of Things Past) by Marcel Proust is one of the supreme achievements of European art. Maybe it is the very pinnacle. .  I last read it maybe forty years ago. I am so glad I decided to reread it.  I find it a very addictive world it pains me to withdraw from.  It, a work in seven volumes, is the very epitome of a reading life book. I urge all seriously into great literature to read this book as young as they can.  That way you can reread it numerous times and you will have a benchmark to place other works in perspective.  I think the biggest hindrance for most in reading this work is the great length of the seven volumes.  For many busy people, those with unpleasant things like jobs, would be loath to invest what could be a year of their reading time in Proust. Many of his readers seem to be academics.  

Volume Three, The Guermantes Way takes us into great pain for our narrator, his beloved Grandmother dies, and his great friend, Swann, is deathly ill.  Much of the narrative action centers around the fabulously wealthy ultra high society family of the Guermantes.  Marcel's family (the work can be described as fiction masquerading as autobiography) has moved next door to the Duchess de Guermantes and Marcel becomes obsessed with them.  He slowly enters their social circle and much of the work is devoted to a microscopic dissection of the social intricacies involved.  There just is so much in this book.  Balzac is the most referenced author, so far, and French society is divided by the Dreyfus case.   

I think this sentence fragment is among my favorites, especially that portion blued over 

I have begun Sodom and Gomorah.