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But if you are new to Proust then it is essential that you begin with 'Swann's Way' not this volume, which was never intended to be a stand-alone novel. You really must read the original seven volumes, now sometimes rearranged into six, as one long book, and if you find Swann's Way hard going there's really no point in ploughing on, as it doesn't get any more 'exciting'. This isn't meant as a criticism however, just as a warning to anyone looking for a bit of light reading.
When you start reading Proust you embark on a long, slow but potentially very rewarding journey, full of superb writing and incredibly sensitive and humorous insights into human nature. There are several different translations of the work, each with its own merits. I won't go into those now, but I will stress that if you choose to read each volume separately you really must keep to the correct order, which is as follows: Swann's Way; Within a Budding Grove; The Guermantes Way; Sodom and Gomorrah; The Captive; The Fugitive; Time Regained.
It's definitely a journey worth making, if you can find the time.
The fourth part of the novel follows the narrator as he returns to Balbec for the second time and is introduced into the world of homosexual activity (which Proust refers to as "inversion") and the affected salons of provencial France. In this volume, The Baron Charlus assumes a major role in the novel and Marcel realizes that his jealousy of his lover, Albertine, is reflective of the jealousy of Swann for Odette (it might sound like a soap opera, but it is definitely not). Whether Sodom and Gomorrah is better or worse than the earlier parts of the novel is not important as a recommendation or criticism; it makes up an integral part of the whole and cannot exist without the other parts. Proust is not easy reading and demands the undivided attention of the reader; as I am becoming aware, the effort put into reading the novel is eminently rewarding. So pour yourself a little Pernod and begin an undertaking that you will never forget.
Even his beloved Duchesse de Guermantes "allowed the azure light of her eyes to float in front of her, but vaguely, so as to avoid the people with whom she did not wish to enter into relations, whose presence she discerned from time to time like a menacing reef in the distance."
Marcel retreats from the social whirl and returns to Balbec, the scene of WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE. There he takes up again with Albertine and, after hobnobbing with the Guermantes, now joins Mme Verdurin's "little band" of opinionated second-raters. This was the same salon at which Swann had met Odette in SWANN'S WAY. You may recall that Swann discovered that Odette was multiply unfaithful to him, yet married her anyway.
In SODOM AND GOMORRAH, it is Marcel who is drawn ever closer to Albertine. As the book draws to a close, he discovers from a chance remark that Albertine claims close friendship with two lesbians one of whose trysts Marcel had witnessed years before in Combray. Just as Swann had agonized just before deciding to wed Odette, Marcel sees the death of his hopes and of any chance for joy in his young life.
"As by an electric current that gives us a shock, I have been shaken by my loves. I have lived them. I have felt them: never have I succeeded in seeing or thinking them. Indeed I am inclined to believe that in these relationships ..., beneath the outward appearance of the woman, it is to these invisible forces with which she is incidentally accompanied that we address ourselves as to obscure deities."
During this, my second reading of IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, I continue to marvel at Proust's mastery. The scene of a social gathering that occupies two hundred pages, and takes me two or three days to read, seems to pass by in the blinking of an eye.
Of the four Penguin Proust volumes I've read so far, this is my favorite--a wonderfully funny study of society (if not of sex). Proust specializes in transformations. We'll be introduced to a character and led to believe that we know everything of importance about him, only to have him turn up in a later volume as entirely different. In this volume, the remote and terrible Baron de Charlus is tranformed a pathetic tubby, besotted by the pianist Morel (himself a bit of a transformation, since he first appeared in the novel as the son of a valet).
Marcel (the narrator) meanwhile finds himself more deeply involved with Albertine, herself probably a stand-in for a male secretary of Proust's, Alfred Agostinelli. To complicate matters, I see elements of this relationship not only in the Marcel-Albertine affair, but also in the Charlus-Morel romance. It's as if Proust divided his experience into two parts, giving the romantic elements to Marcel and the comic part to Charlus.
The two romances come together at the seaside salon of the awful Madame Verdurin, who is inexorably rising in the world. In one of Proust's hundred-page setpieces, the aristocratic baron has his first clash with the social-climbing Verdurins. I found myself cheering for Charlus, whom I'd earlier learned to dislike, because he is so genuine and she is such a fraud. And I know in my heart (and through my earlier readings of this great novel) that things are not going to turn out well for Charlus. Against all logic, Proust in one of his hundred-page dissections of French society is able to keep me on tenterhooks.
The less said about Albertine, the better. I am not one of those who find her/him a convincing character. So it is with a bit of apprehension that I now turn to volume five of the Proust Penguin, containing the two books of the "Albertine cycle."
But back to Sodom (as it were): this is a wonderful translation of a riveting story. If you stick with "In Search of Lost Time" thus far, you will know that you are in the middle of one of the great experiences of your life.
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