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

Part 1 .... (stupid LJ)

[weofodthignen]

On the Proust passage - I backtracked once; I misread "never" as "ever." But I didn't find it unmanageable and don't find the "My mother [lengthy aside enclosed in a pair of commas] having . . ." misleading. Circuitous, yes, but I rather think that's part of the point of Proust. I do wonder how I - and more importantly you - would find the sentence in French. And am a bit startled that you are not reading him in French - from what you've written here in the past I thought you were almost native in French reading ability, and you're currently immersed in the language. I do accept that there will always be a difference between a native's reaction and a non-native's, but I'd thought you pretty far into the exceptional near-native group, for French at least.

I loathe Henry James. Had to read his stuff at Oxford and hate it even beyond what I feel for Gower. I found even his statement of purpose in writing A Portrait of a Lady impenetrable. Something about "I want to make a perfect portrayal of an idiot naif in order to trick the reader

Re: Part 1 .... (stupid LJ)

[wwidsith]

I think you (one) expect it to be "My mother [...], having done something, did something else." Which would be fine. But the first set of parenthetical commas is confusing, because it's actually "My mother [...] having done something, my father did something else." And I don't think you can pick that up on the first go.

I very much enjoyed your takedown of James, all of which I find convincing but which I'm afraid doesn't stop me enjoying the book. I'm just in the mood for something dense and chewy. Words like "intermissions" are part of the enjoyment for me; I find his vocabulary both unusual and exact, and you have to be exact if you're going to be unusual. But yeah, your reaction does make total sense, and I feel the same thing with other writers who are objectively little different. I do have a deep love of irony, and his mastery of it in this book helps alleviate the doughiness quite a lot (I'm told that late James is much more opaque and less fun).

and part 2

[weofodthignen]

But the unclarity of James, it seems to me, is at the paragraph level and above. It just doesn't hang together. It seems designed to be incoherent. I never heard this from my father about Proust, and that sentence you quote seems to be going somewhere, albeit under a heavy load - which is Proust's evident purpose.

Now the Pynchon I find completely clear, if impressionistic. It seems to me that the objections will be of 2 kinds. One is stylistic, to the use of almost shockingly weird words (the sun as a device, the sun as baleful, the sun as almost shapeless) - I tend that way myself and have frequently been told it's a silly thing to do, over-dramatic and over-intellectual. Only a subset of readers like that kind of heated style. The other is to his point, about being weirded out by the sun. And to evaluate that I'd have to have read the guy :-) But both Proust and James are doing it about people, which tends to attract different readers from writers who do it about landscapes or events

[egaook14]

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