Proust, Jenga, and a baleful smear.

[wwidsith]

So have a look at this catchy sentence, which Proust uses to open the second volume of his novel sequence.

My mother, when it was a question of our having M. de Norpois to dinner for the first time, having expressed her regret that Professor Cottard was away from home and that she herself had quite ceased to see anything of Swann, since either of

Comments

[wwidsith]

It's true, you're not normally forced to actually re-read things in the way that you are with this example. But even getting used to his style irritated me. Every time I picked up the book I felt like I was tuning my ear in to a rambling old uncle. Bah, I don't know. You're quite a fan, aren't you? Do you recommend pressing on?

[oh_meow]

I think all those years of looking at long wobbly vague latin sentences with the verbs sprinkled wherever the writer felt like, and with any useful word they thought obvious (to a roman) left out must've turned my brain. I didn't even notice in the Proust until you pointed it out, it just gently slid into my brain as "the mother said this, then the father replied like this"

[wwidsith]

The meaning certainly slides into the brain, but the actual thread of the sentence seems very unusual here.

It's true though, in some languages you are conditioned to expect elements in different places...in German (or Old English) you naturally wait for the end of the sentence to find out what the verb is. The problem is that in modern English, you are conditioned to expect the subject early-doors and when it's delayed for this long it seems almost wilfully awkward.

[oh_meow]

I just realised how long-winded I made that first sentence in my comment too.

[herself_nyc]

First of all, hooray! I'm so glad you've taken up James, and Maisie in particular, and I hope you'll post or email me or something about your responses to the book, which is one of my great favorites of James and of novels in general. How far into it are you?

Having just read The Wings of the Dove after only 29 years of trying, I sympathize with you on the sentence issue. I also noticed when I first started reading Proust, in various translations, that he shared, at least to my superficial eye, that tendency to layer subtlety upon clause upon subtlety. Generally I LIKE that, maybe because I tend to be such a fast reader and like being forced to slow down and chew 100 times before each swallow. Have you tried Proust in the Lydia Davis translation? I think that's the one I ultimate read when I managed to get through the first big volume. I bogged down shortly into the second

[wwidsith]

I'm only 50 or 60 pages in I think -- I'm reading it on the iPad, so basically whenever I'm on the bus.

I like long complicated sentences too, I think that's what I was trying to establish to myself in the post. It's really just Proust, and I think it's just because it's a translation.

As for Pynchon, I don't know if you'd care for it or not but I can only tell you I love him, for so many different reasons. Normally people recommend The Crying of Lot 49 as a starter book, because it's very small -- really just a long short story -- but is a good demonstration of his techniques and obsessions. My own favourite - unfairly neglected, I feel - is Vineland, a book set in the 90s but kind of about the 60s and their influence on the generation that were young then. With some aliens and lesbian ninjas thrown in. Although it's huge fun, I find it a very serious book with important things to say. I hope you give him a go, anyway!

[ruakh]

Funnily enough, I had little difficulty with the Proust sentence, but am still puzzling over that first James sentence.

(But yes, James' writing is wonderful. I'm a big fan of these two sentences from The Portrait of a Lady: "It was true that the national banner had floated immediately over the spot of the lady's nativity, and the breezy freedom of the stars and stripes might have shed an influence upon the attitude which she then and there took towards life. And yet Madame Merle had evidently nothing of the fluttered, flapping quality of a morsel of bunting in the wind; her deportment expressed the repose and confidence which come from a large experience." Few writers could find themselves having to clarify that a character doesn't flap around like a flag, and fewer still could manage the clarification with such aplomb.)

[norabird]

interesting. i still cannot quite grasp at the proust sentence, and yet i love proust's style more than james's; i very much like portrait of a lady, but reading wings of a dove, though worth it, is a fight against myself--the way he constructs things is too opaque for my taste, too around the bend in a stylistic way. that is, i don't feel it's how one thinks. whereas proust i think follows the natural bend of thought, which does not always go straight or end up in the expected place. mind i can sometimes only do a few pages of proust at a time, and i have to either untangle the sentences and paragraphs or else let go of knowing quite what the subject of a sentence is; but they're so rich and immediate and close to life, where to me james is distant and cloudy. proust is my favorite writer of all i think, though he's hard. (i've read up to book four in remembrance of things past

[wwidsith]

Haven't read DFW yet, actually the only thing of his I've read is a long essay about grammar peeves which infuriated me, but I'm sure he's better in fiction.

I keep meaning to tell you how much I love your journal recently, I really must comment there more often - I'm a real sucker for melancholy reflections on life and love and music and you are good with that material!

[norabird]

Infinite jest is, on a routine basis, so good you almost have to laugh.

Also, thank you! Your entries are always such full formed, interesting commentaries, whereas I have this unedited running commentary which I sometimes wish I took more care with presenting sensibly, so that's very nice to hear.

Waiting to hear more about Libya from you, by the way! Though it's probably hard to frame.