Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

Turn-of-the-century French experimental literature: not one of my favorite genres. Not by a long shot. But I saw Proust's work alluded to twice in the Wall Street Journal, and it was another book I could cross off my College Board-recomended list of novels to read before college, so I committed to perservering through Swann's Way, the first installment in Proust's monumental trilogy, In Search of Lost Time. I will not, however, be perservering through the latter two any time soon.

I have little love for stream-of-consciousness writing. Unfortunately for me, that is exactly what this entire book is comprised of. Proust's narrator recounts his entire childhood after the taste of a madeleine and tea sets off his memory. As a young boy in late 19th-century France, he grows up in the countryside and the narration meanders along with him. Detailed, detailed, detailed descriptions abound, with many involving flowers, which I found rather effeminate. The childhood narration is interrupted by the section "Swann in Love," which involves an acquaintance of the boy's family and takes place before he is born. "Swann in Love" is merely a chronicle of Swann's desperate, possessive obsession with some courtesan-type woman. She is shallow and promiscuous, and what Swann terms his "love" for her, is really just a desire to subdue and control her, to make himself "indispensable" to her.

The novel then switches back to the young boy, who grows to love Swann's daughter in much the same way Swann loved that woman. He has married her in the meantime, and the girl is the product of their union. The end of Swann's Way is not a decisive conclusion, for the story continues in the next two volumes.

I am sure the text suffered in translation, for it has that inordinately stuffy tone common to foreign works. Even the style that survives hinders the readability, though. Proust's sentences are endless, and one forgets the subject by the time one reaches the verb. The descriptions, which describe everything into oblivion, are tedious and pointless. There is little to call a plot, which eliminated any motivation I may have had to continue turning the pages.

I can see some merit in Proust's ability to represent elements of the human experience, especially the concept of memory association. Just as Swann was flooded with memories when he heard Vinteuil's sonata, so have I been ambushed by particular songs. But it was just such a long book, and I do not agree with the underlying philosophies behind it. I don't see a purposeless pleasure-seeking existence as particularly profound. Or correct.