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In Search Of Lost Time Vol 1: Swann's Way: Swann's Way Vol 1 (Vintage Classics) [Paperback]

Marcel Proust (Author), Scott Moncrieff (Translator), Terence Kilmartin (Translator), D J Enright (Translator)

3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)

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Book Description

Publication Date: 5 Dec 1996 | Series: Vintage Classics

THE ACCLAIMED FULLY REVISED EDITION OF THE SCOTT MONCRIEFF AND KILMARTIN TRANSLATION

In the opening volume of Proust's great novel, the narrator travels backwards in time in order to tell the story of a love affair that had taken place before his own birth. Swann's jealous love for Odette provides a prophetic model of the narrator's own relationships. All Proust's great themes - time and memory, love and loss, art and the artistic vocation - are here in kernel form.

(20020218)

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THE ACCLAIMED FULLY REVISED EDITION OF THE SCOTT MONCRIEFF AND KILMARTIN TRANSLATION

(20020218)

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Product details

Paperback: 544 pages
Publisher: Vintage Classics; New Ed edition (5 Dec 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 009936221X
ISBN-13: 978-0099362210
Product Dimensions: 13 x 3.8 x 19.7 cm

Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 6,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Review

"My advice is to plunge straight into Volume 1, Swann's Way there are many who swear the experience has permanently enriched their lives" (Daily Mail )

"One of the cornerstones of the Western literary canon" (The Times )

"Surely the greatest novelist of the 20th century" (Sunday Telegraph )

"As close to being a definitive English version of the great novel as we are likely to get" (Scotsman )

"Proust isn't just the most profound of novelists, but the most entertaining, too. No reader ever forgets his most killingly funny scenes... Proust sinks deepest in readers because the book is so exhaustively analytical, so ceaselessly truthful. Not the least of it is the book's heavenly length, so that it inevitably takes over your life for a long stretch... the experience of reading it becomes, in itself, an unforgettable thing" (Independent )

Book Description

The definitive translation of the greatest French novel of the twentieth century (20020218)

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Inside This Book (Learn More)

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A powertool in the study of the modern arts. 28 May 2011

By J. Davis

Format:Paperback

In Search of Lost Time is a very strange experience and not just while your are actually reading it.
I'm not, although I would like to, go into Proust's strange prose style - which admittedly you do get used to after a while, in fact it becomes so normal you find yourself doing it - because I'm not a student of literature and there are others far more eloquent than I to explain his elongated sentences that go on and on forever without coming to an end and by the time you get there you've forgotten what he was talking about when he started.
But like I said, you do get used to.
Actually, in the beginning I used to underline the subject-verb-object (or whatever order it came in) with pencil - dirty habit I know.

But the strangest thing about reading this book comes after.
You hear his echo EVERYWHERE!
Not just in thoughts on the nature of memory and time, but also: self image, alienation, love, self pity, selfishness, sensation, food, fashion, snobbery, delusion, hypochondira, society, vision, colour, art, fickleness... and you realise you'd never really thought about them objectivity before. Proust breaks these ideas down for you into their constituent parts, contemplates, ruminates (yes maybe a little too long), and leaves you with a clear sense of it within the human experience.
This book had such an impact on early 20th century artists and writers you hear these echoes constantly, even if they are second hand influences, but strangest of all, you hear them in yourself.

The book is a breakdown of all the silly games humans play with themselves and each other.
Very few of the characters , least of all Marcel, is admirable.
Is that because Proust is unafraid to give him over to you guts and psychic bubble and all?... Read more ›

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60 of 65 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolute Perfection 12 Jun 2003

By Adrian Lever

Format:Paperback

Proust's great novel is by far the greatest work of literature I have ever read, including Shakespeare, Goethe, Joyce, Woolf, Dostoyesvsky, Austen, Nabokov, Hemingway and Tolstoy. 'Lost Time' is a story spanning forty years in the life of a man named only once in the narrative, and follows his reminiscences of love, society, and becoming a writer. Proust has the deepest insight into human behaviour and the human mind: it is humanity itself that he essentially aims to dissect within the flesh of his novel. But 'Lost Time' is also a novel very much about art, sexuality, and of course, his famous themes of Memory and Habit. The plot itself is very, very slow (it took me five weeks of absolute solid non-stop reading to devour all six volumes, but by week two my wife had only got as far as page fifty, and then gave up), so if you want a pacey story, a quick and satisfying read, then this will not be for you - having said this, I actually found parts quite exciting, and, despite the banality of some of the events, Proust's writing makes the story so enjoyable that it is quite unputdownable; it can be hard work, but it can also be sublimely easy to read: it is as if, after a hundred pages or so, one becomes 'fluent' in Proust, and reading him becomes as natural as taking another breath.
Proust manages, in my opinion, to achieve perfection in every literary sense: vol. 1 is a poetic and moving reminiscence of childhood, and contains some breathtakingly beautiful passages (especially of Combray), and includes the delightful novella 'Swann in Love' (these Swann bits and childhood bits are important to the later volumes too); vol. 1 is perfectly acceptable to be read on its own, without the others, if you so desire (and don't have the time); vol.... 2 is the 'Bildungsroman', as it were, and sets up all the important characters, including the wonderful Saint-Loup and the alluring Albertine; vol. 3 is very much a 'society' novel, although don't expect 'Vanity Fair' ... what struck me in this part, and more so in vol. 4 was how utterly hilarious a writer Proust is - his humour is at once cruel and delightful; then vol. 4 is very much the 'gay' novel, and probably the funniest too - I laughed aloud all the way through ... the characterisation of the Baron is formidable in this volume - probably one of the best drawn characters in all of literature; but vol. 5, the Captive, I found to be very slow, and very intense, but although it has the most frustratingly slow passages, it has the most sublimely beautiful ones too - ones that rival the entire poetical canon; and vol. 5, the Fugitive, is sort of a summing up, a tying up of loose ends before the finale; finally, vol. 6 is indeed the very finale, and it is quite spectacular, one can see clearly the terrifying influence of the Great War on Proust in this part.
Vols. 1 and 6 were written first as a small (700p) novel, which Proust then added, and added, and added to, as the years went by. I could really feel his development (to perfection), as a writer, through the volumes, but it still all holds in the same wonderful voice throughout. Incidentally, the new Penguin translations read quite poorly in comparison to this one, and lose a lot of the humour. Always stick with the D.J. Enright revised translation - it is the best English version.
This is a must read for everyone who has the time to do so. Reading this was not only the most phenomenal literary experience of my life, but also one of the most amazing experiences of my life full stop. This novel finds the perfect balance between the most poetic prose of all time, engrossing characters (and their stories), intellectual and investigative essayistic passages, artistic and pyschoanalytical investigation, both satirical and delightful humour, and the most perspicacious observations of humanity ever written.
Proust's great novel is sheer perfection. If you read it, be prepared to not enjoy any other novels afterward - because you probably won't: nothing better can be written. Genius. Read more ›

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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Start here on one of literature's greatest journeys 9 Jun 2009

By Phil O'Sofa

Format:Paperback

The greatest novel ever? Quite possibly. Certainly there is nothing to compare in terms of quantity and quality combined, and compared to other very long novels Proust is easy to read. His writing is so beautiful, the famously long sentences full of a glorious wit and insight, that I found this semi-fictional memoir a great pleasure to read, so much so that I have now read two different translations.

If you find the prospect of reading the whole magnificent opus too daunting, just start with Swann's Way, which can be treated as a novel in its own right, and see if you don't become hooked. That and the second volume will give you the flavor of the whole work and if you aren't enjoying it there's no point in ploughing through, or buying, the later volumes. You'll either love the writing and think it's the best ever, or you'll give up early on, unable to face the challenge that lies ahead.

So what's it all about? Well, if I may be so bold as to try summarizing around 3,500 pages in two words (and improve on Monty Python in the process), I'd say it was about human weakness. Proust's great strength as a writer is his ability, with his extraordinarily sensitive nature, to capture the essence of what it means to be human: to desire, to love, to cheat, to be jealous, to face death, plus quite a lot about the appeal of art and music. All this is in the context of wealthy Parisian society at the end of the nineteenth century, which may seem far removed from the world we live in now, but the one of the great things about the book is that we can see that people don't really change: human nature is human nature still.

Which translation to go for?... Read more ›

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3.0 out of 5 stars Dear M. Proust, may we have more matter with less art.

Of course, it feels more than usually absurd to attach a star-rating to a landmark of world literature such as Proust's gargantuan novel, but then again no other novel is more... Read more

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2.0 out of 5 stars As about as high-brow as it gets...

I try to read difficult books every so often ; "classics" by often foreign writers. I enjoyed "Therese Raquin" by Zola recently , but I must admit that I didn't like "The Trial"... Read more

Published on 5 Feb 2011 by L. Davidson

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