First things first

I actually started reading In Search of Lost Time a few weeks ago, and finished the first volume, "Swann's Way", this weekend, but I'm going back to the beginning to try again. Why? Because when I started on this project I didn't really know what to expect. I knew I was entering the modernist era, I'd heard that it was among the first of those works to evade the constraints of linear time, and I'd read the Wikipedia article on Marcel Proust, but like taking Lamaze classes to prepare for childbirth, it wasn't until I got into the first throes of labor that I realized how little those preparations actually did for me. I was dull through the start, and I'm sure I missed a lot. It took me until about half way through "Swann's Way" to start appreciating the work, then I found myself falling in love with it and unless I go back I won't know for sure whether it was the book or myself that was slow to warm up. Plus I've come to the conclusion, after this first taste, that Lost Time is worth absorbing, not just reading. That's where the notes and the research come in.

The version I started reading is titled Remembrance of Things Past (a translation I understand Proust detested) and was published in 1934 by Random House, translator C. K. Scott Moncrieff (see note below). In this version the seven volumes have been condensed into just two. The copy I am reading actually belongs to the library, which will keep me reading at a steady pace since they will want it back (according to the obsolete borrowing card in the back it has been on their shelves since at least 1955, and I think that's pretty cool). In my own library I have a beautiful twelve volume set, the 1939 uniform edition published by Chatto & Windus in England, a gift from my husband and son that I can't quite bring myself to pour over or leaf through. Thankfully the library's copy was available (and has been sitting on the shelf waiting for attention for over a year, so I don't expect a lot of competition).

I believe this worth mentioning because this is a big work; it will take me a long to read and will generate a lot of posts and I will likely note page numbers often, making the version relevant.

I'm going to jot notes as I go. They will be anything from definitions of words to my own comments on the writing style or story, sometimes they'll be summaries, and now I can even link to comments found elsewhere on the web, something I couldn't do in my handwritten notes.

Proust will be a journey. I am aiming to finish In Search of Lost Time by the end of the year so that I can count it toward my reading goal. Time to get started.

**(7/10/11) The version I've switched to reading as of now, although I'm likely to compare the two from time to time, has the translated title In Search of Lost Time and is the 2003 Modern Library Paperback Edition, translated by Moncrieff and Terence Kilmart and revised by D. J. Enright. In this version the work is in six volumes. The page numbers I list will be from this version.