The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 10 December 2004
by Marcel Proust
This book is the second of seven volumes of C. K. Scott Moncrieff's popular translation of Proust's massive semi-autobiographical novel, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. In this, Proust continues his ruminations on the things in his life that stir within his memory, and he continues his impossibly intricate descriptions of people and of places. The book is in two major parts, opening with "Mme. Swann at Home", which gives an intimate portrait of Odette (the cocotte who was the object of love in Swann's Way), now married to M. Swann. Our narrator is now in love with Swann's daughter, Gilberte, but abandons her in what seems like a juvenile fit of pique. Yet, the narrator (not often referred to as Marcel) can still turn a piercing eye upon his motivations and come away leaving the reader overwhelmed with his verbal acuity. Later, in Place Names: The Place, Proust relates his arrival, with his beloved grandmother, at the seaside resort town of Balbec. The first half of this section is an amusing description of the hotel where they alight, and the various characters who populate the town. Proust's incredible sensitivity to his environment, though, is almost paralyzing to him in a pathetic manner that may be unfamiliar to modern readers. In the second part of Place Names: The Place, the narrator joins his old friend Bloch for dinner, bringing along his new friend, Robert de Saint-Loup, who is part of the demi-nobility and is on leave from his post in the military. This section is rife with social structure and awareness, the class differences between Bloch and his family, who are Jewish in a time of genteel anti-semitism, and Saint-Loup, who orbits in a more arid and rarified social circle. The final section is Seascape, with Frieze of Girls, and it opens with Proust's acute description of five pretty and self-absorbed girls tripping along the seaside at Balbec. The narrator is determined to fall in love with one of the girls, but finds he is applying his love broadly across the various characteristics of all of them. He settles on Albertine, a petulant girl with numerous flaws, but who seems to respond to the narrator's attentions. All the girls are competing for his affection, it seems, and he relishes the role of multiple suitor. He is looking for satisfaction of his lust as much as for his love here, and his pursuit is almost comical in its baroque plots. Along the way, our narrator becomes friends with the artist Elstir (who may be an amalgam of Whistler and Manet), who paints in Balbec and is familiar with the frieze of girls. Proust digresses on the nature and impressions of art, in what is a somewhat tedious passage. Overall, this book doesn't have quite the compelling drive that Swann's Way exhibits, but Proust's meditations on habit and memory are still compelling and vivid. Again, a masterpiece of introspective literature.
Also by Proust: [Swann's Way] [The Guermantes Way] [Sodome et Gomorrhe] [The Captive] [The Fugitive]