One of my favorite authors, Alain de Botton, came out with a book last year called How Proust Can Change Your Life, which I haven't read, but its presence has given a boost to my Proust-consciousness. What put me over the top was looking at the customer comments at Amazon; every person gave it five stars. If it really is that good, then what am I waiting for?

But they're great digressions. Every couple of pages he makes some penetrating insight that makes you put down the book for a couple of minutes to digest it. Which is not increasing my reading speed. He spends some time talking about a young woman who's treated her father awfully, and summing up her problems, says

It was not evil that gave her the idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it was pleasure, rather, that seemed evil.

Surprisingly, none of the characters yet are very sympathetic. The action takes place in the upper classes of late 19th century France, and everyone is always trying to impress everyone else within earshot (while putting down everyone out of earshot). You have to give the narrator some credit for being so descriptive and perspicacious, but so far he's sort of hard to take seriously, being such the sensitive sort (he spends 50 pages describing, without embarrassment, how as a child he couldn't fall asleep without a goodnight kiss from his beautiful Mamma). Swann is about the most sympathetic character so far, but despite being a man of taste who generally has the right ideas about things, he's in an awful relationship with a stupid and shallow woman (Odette) and can't bring himself to realize that it's destroying him, which makes you want to just slap him. It would be one thing if she had any redeeming qualities, but if she does, I can't see them.

It is driving me nuts that Mme Verdurin will go to her grave not realizing that she's a total loser. I so want her to get her comeuppance, but even if she did, she wouldn't realize it. Loser!

"I do feel it's absurd that a man of his intelligence should let himself suffer for a woman of that sort, and one who isn't even interesting, for they tell me she's an absolute idiot!" she added with the wisdom invariably shown by people who, not being in love themselves, feel that a clever man should only be unhappy about a person who is worth his while; which is rather like being astonished that anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so insignificant a creature as the comma bacillus.

It can be a little uncomfortable to read spot-on observations about falling in love with someone who your rational mind knows isn't right for you, since we've all been guilty of that mistake and thus feel our own bad decisions critiqued and expertly dissected. But I don't mean to compare any of my ex-girlfriends to Odette! I haven't been able to find any positive character traits in her yet. This chapter is about her, so I'll let you know if I discover any.

I'm now in the second book (of seven). We're back to first-person narration again, which I think doesn't work quite as well as the more third-person narration of the Swann section, partially because the narrator is an oversensitive child (and it looks like he's going to become an oversensitive adult). I have been told that the end of the novel isn't as good as the beginning. Just what I needed to hear!

Some changes in my attitudes over the last few months: for one thing, there really is a plot, and it's pretty interesting. I'm enjoying watching various people rise and fall in this aristocratic society. Also, I've found that the writing style isn't really so hard to read, once you get used to it. Sometimes I do get to the end of a half-page-long sentence and decide it isn't really worth it to go back and spend the time to really understand exactly what he means, but in general I haven't found it to be extraordinarily difficult reading.

A couple more quotes from my recent reading:

Like everybody who is not in love, he imagined that one chooses the person one loves after endless deliberation and on the strength of diverse qualities and advantages.

People who laugh so heartily at what they themselves have said, when it is not funny, dispense us accordingly, by taking upon themselves the responsibility for the mirth, from joining in it.

In fact, Proust excels at creating characters who are obnoxious caricatures at first glance, and then, by exploring their own feelings and rationales, making them more sympathetic. For example, Mme Verdurin is back, and as much of a loser as ever, but I understand why she is the way she is, and it makes it more difficult to outright hate her; I guess my attitude is now closer to pity. But she's still a loser!

It's actually getting a little infuriating. He's acting like a jerk, seems to realize it, but doesn't seem to feel any particular remorse. It's rather hard to feel much sympathy for him right now. Hopefully, soon either he'll start acting better, or he'll describe his thoughts well enough that I'll develop a bit more sympathy for him.

I felt that my life with Albertine was on the one hand, when I was not jealous, nothing but boredom, and on the other hand, when I was jealous, nothing but pain.

Marcel's affair with Albertine came to a surprising end, and it took him a couple hundred pages to get over it. But the last book (Time Regained) went by quite fast. The end was actually quite inspiring (at the age of 40+, Marcel finally gets off his butt and starts writing his novel), and certainly it inspired me to spend more time trying to finish up some of my creative work.

What more can I say? It was a great, great book. Go read it yourself.