Goodness gracious, it has been quite a while since I absolutely hated a book. Usually, even if I do not like a certain classic book at first, I try to find some qualities I like and let me say that I had to try very hard with this one.
Swann's Way is mostly about life at a manse called Combray in the French countryside as recalled in vivid detail by the narrator from when he was a child. The titular "way" describes one of two or three walks that his family would take on a regular basis so named because it would pass the estate of a family by the name of Swann. This particular walking path would become important to the narrator because he would develop an infatuation with the young girl that lived there. This is especially important because Mr. Swann (and his family by extension) would become persona non grata because of some indirect insult perceived by the family at some point. Although this seems at first to be a leaping point for some for a child's romance tale, it most certainly is not. This infatuation with the young girl seems to be just one in a long chain of obsessions by the young narrator, preceded by his mother's affection, the dust motes in his room, hawthorn flowers, and the titles of local plays. During this chapter we also get a slight overview of the personalities of the household of Combray. We learn about his father's obsession with meteorology, his grandmother's interest in the town's drama, and the unusual personality of the house maid. Oddly these characters function as backdrops and furniture because they do not play a big part in the internal world of the narrator. Around the 300 page mark the focus changes to the viewpoint of Mr. Swann who seems to share some of the qualities of the narrator. He is a socialite who falls in love with a young woman by the name of Odette who begins to infiltrate his little clique despite the fact that she is a courtesan and far below his social standing. He learns to love her regardless of her standing and the fact that, at first, he does not really seem to find her particularly beautiful or interesting. His feelings for her seem to revolve around a beautiful fragment of some unnamed piano piece he overheard and their relationship becomes equally flighty. He never seems to be certain of his love for her until she begins "courting" strangers, at which point he obsesses about her to the point of stalking her and even wandering the streets blindly in the hopes of just seeing her. This persists for some time until he realizes his own folly and moves on with his life. After this long diversion into the life of Mr. Swann, we return again to the life of the Narrator as a child with a short chapter of him waxing poetic about the importance of place-names and places themselves. He befriends Swann's daughter after obsessing over her from afar and she reject his overtures of love but they remain friends anyway. He also meets Mr. Swann in person and holds him in very high regard despite his family's opinion of the Swanns. We also learn by the end of the book that, at some point, Mr. Swann had married Odette and presumably had a child with her.
There are quite a few things that I did not like about the book itself and Proust's style of writing but let me first discuss the positive aspects. It is important for me to remember, and by extension you, that the narrative of the "book" is actually stretched over thousands of pages and so any lack coherent narrative of Swann's Way may be resolved over the course of the entire epic "In Search of Lost Time". Swann's Way may actually function as a mind-numbingly long 500 hundred page "introduction." The scope of the work is just to enormous for me to comprehend with only what is essentially the first chapter. So one thing that I can appreciate is the sheer enormity of the work. I can also appreciate the complex themes of the fleeting nature of all things, memory, time, love, surroundings, etc. He weaves these strongly into the book. Another thing I can appreciate is his attention to the smallest detail like how the light plays in his room or the joy he can experience from the small of a flower or the experience of reading a book alone in the garden.
What I did not like about the book is that I felt estranged by the author. The descriptions were beautiful and poetic but it was so overdone that a two pages of the book could quite literally be comprised of one never-ending run-on sentence with a chain of commas so long that the original subject is lost in the confusion. He would stack similes so much that they would loose their spark and become a pile of frustrating obstacles in the way of the story or even a simple point. This became a seriously frustrating hurdle to the story, so much so that I feel I missed some of the subtext and even some larger plot points in the jumble. I threatened to put the book away multiple times and could only read it in 15 -20 page increments. I only finished the book on principle. I would love to copy/paste a sample of an annoyingly long sentence but that would be as long as everything thing I have written to this point. I am not exaggerating. Its is a small item, but I also must say that I did not like how the narrator jumped shoes into the life of Mr. Swann describing events that apparently happened before he was born and not even being clear that this was a leap into the past. I realize that this is an older book as well as a translation from French but even as an exercise in experimental writing, this book could use an editor with a red marker and a sharp pair of scissors.
Thanks!
Joe
