About Marcel Proust

Hello all!  I usually like to go over a little bit about the author and book prior to reading it as well as actually announcing what book I am going to read for the millions of readers following the blog.  This time I have obviously skipped most of the formalities such as finishing the last book, or announcing the new book before doing anything.  However, despite my literary misbehavior I am going to go ahead and provide a brief introduction of Marcel Proust and the book Swann's Way.

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was born near Paris, France on July 10, 1871 and died on November 18, 1922.  Proust was a sickly person who developed asthma at an early age and affected him greatly throughout his life.  It interfered heavily with is attempts at working and being in the military and he used his illness as leverage to secure a multi-year leave of absence from his "job" that he never worked at until they retired him.  He stayed at his parents home for the entire duration and was still there when his parents passed away.  Luckily his parents were well off and left him a considerable inheritance when they passed.  Despite his illness and inability to work (at a library, no less) Proust was able to spend a great deal of time writing and social climbing.  Of all of his essays, stories, and critiques, Proust is best known for his gargantuan work In Search of Lost Time of which Swann's Way is the first volume.  Proust was also a closet homosexual and is respected by some for being one of the first writers in France to openly write about homosexuals. (This does not occur in Swann's Way aside from a brief mention of a lesbian interaction but apparently comes up at length in the fourth book with some characters noticed by the protagonist.)

Swann's Way is part one of a seven volume series revolving around the memories of the Narrator as a child staying at his home in a fictional town called Combray (based on Proust's home near Paris).  The volume (as well as the entire work as a whole) deals heavily on random memories generated by the taste of a madeline cookie dipped in tea and in the involuntary and fleeting nature of memory.  Most of the stories revolve around the Narrator's fascination with nature and observations of the people his parents have dealings with, often with a philosophical tinge.

Ok. There you go.  I hope to have this finished up by the end of April (early  May, at the latest) so look for that soon!  Joe