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In these inspiring essays about why we read, Proust explores all the pleasures and trials that we take from books, as well as explaining the beauty of Ruskin and his work, and the joys of losing yourself in literature as a child. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves – and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives – and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Exquisite
When Swann gives the Narrator a pamphlet by Bergotte in "Swann's Way", don't you wish you too could read that pamphlet, which you are certain contains the most elegant insights beautifully phrased? But you of course realize that no one could write as well as Bergotte except ... Proust himself. Well here is that pamphlet, or the nearest we'll get to a facsimile in the real world. Proust speaks in these relatively few pages of perfumed prose of Ruskin and then the pleasures of reading (a theme he will reuse in almost identical sentiments in that same first volume). But is Proust's perambulations, circling around his favorite themes, even if you've heard these echoes before, such a bad thing? Fans of A la Recherche will come swooning, having something to read while they dip their madeleines. The rest? C'est dommage. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Fiction / Literary; Foreign Language Study / Japanese; History / Europe / France; Literary Criticism / European / French; ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Notes on this particular edition
Obviously Swanns Way is an undisputed classic, but there are a few problems with the "Barnes and Noble Classics" edition. First, there is of course the issue of translation. B & N use the somewhat antiquated C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation, which has its flaws. A review of Montcrieff's edition by Joseph Collins in the New York Times, which is contained in the B & N edition, gives the translation a pretty glowing review: "Ezra Pound...said of one of the books of M. Proust: '...There is work for a master stylist in turning Proust into English; a subtile, uncreative temperament might make a career of this translation.' The mast stylist has been found in Mr. C.K. Scott Moncrieff." Is Mr. Collins correct? Perhaps, perhaps not. Certainly Moncrieff captures the slow, subtle, diaphanous texture of Proust's writing, but a lot of his usage is just plain old and fails to resonate. That beings said, it's not as though the translation is altogether bad. It's still Proust, so it's still incredibly poignant.
Also, I have a few issues with the actual composition of the Barnes and Noble Classics Edition, particularly the back cover. Obviously this is rather unimportant in the abstract, but the back cover synopsis is completely riddled with factual errors. Whoever wrote it apparently confused Proust's narrator with Swann himself, so we get a completely skewed assessment of the plot. This of course has very little bearing on the story itself, but it's completely unprofessional.
Actually, that's really my only other complaint. The rest of the novel is put together pretty nicely, and the Renoir painting on the front is kind of nice, I guess.
That being said, I would still hasten to recommend a newer translation to anyone who feels at all inclined to read Proust at a more cursory capacity, without having to wade through some rather obsolete verbiage. Thankfully there are a lot of good alternative editions on Amazon.

The bottom line, though, is that everyone should read Proust, by any means necessary. Where drama is concerned, we recognize Shakespeare as the best of the form, and in that sense so should we regard Proust as the supreme novelist. Nobody beats him. ... Read more

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This title is an introduction to the life and works of Marcel Proust. It explores his ideas on topics such as memory and sexuality. Proust is portrayed as a writer who has influenced the way literature is approached and the way we think about ourselves. ... Read more

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Viking’s In Search of Lost Time is the first completelynew translation of Proust’s masterwork since the 1920s. UnderChristopher Prendergast’s general editorship, these superb editionsbring us a more rich, comic, and lucid Proust than American readershave previously been able to enjoy.

After the relative intimacy of the first two volumes of In Searchof Lost Time, The Guermantes Way opens up a vast, dazzlinglandscape of fashionable Parisian life in the late nineteenth centuryas the narrator enters the brilliant, shallow world of the literaryand aristocratic salons. Both a salute to and a devastating satire ofa time, place, and culture, The Guermantes Way defines thegreat tradition of novels that follow the initiation of a young maninto the ways of the world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

excellent edition of classic novel
The Guermantes Way (Modern Library 213) There's nothing to add regarding this great Proust classic after eighty years. The delivery of this fine edition was perfect. I couldn't find it elsewhere. I wanted it in this edition because I have the other six volumes also. Modern Library did a god job of seemingly compressing all 800 to 900 pages of each into a fairly thin book.

Superior Translation of Proust's Masterpiece
This is the third volume in the new English translation of Proust's "A la ricerche de temp perdu," completed in 2001 under the guise of General Editor Christopher Prendergast, in which each volume is written by a different author.This groundbreaking new edition is the first entirely original English translation of Proust's novel since C. K. Scott Moncrieff first adapted it into English back in the Edwardian era (The 1993 Modern Library edition by D. J. Enright is a revision of the old Scott/Kilmartin translation which does little more than bring it in line with the current French edition of the novel).

This new translation is said to be more loyal to the French original.It is also said flow better and be more readable.Whereas I can't vouche for either of the above claims myself, since I don't read French and this is my first time tackling the novel, I can tell you that I am almost finished with Mark Treharne's translation of "The Guermantes Way" and I'm greatly enjoying it.In fact, I find it more interesting that the first two volumes (which I read in the Modern Library translation).I think this is due not only to the new subject matter but also the more readable translation.

This edition also contains invaluable endnotes explaining Proust's cultural references about people, places, and things alluded to in the text which are probably unfamiliar to the contemporary anglophone reader.These endnotes were truly enlighting and added to my enjoyment of the book.For instance, I can't imagine reading this volume without the account of the Dreyfus affair (a divisive political controversy involving the military and anti-semitism oft discussed in the fin de siecle French salons depicted by Proust) and its players.

In this volume, the snobbish young narrator first begins to enter the Parisian high society of the Guermantes.There he renews his friendship with Robert de Saint-Loup, the dashing young army officer he met in Balbec, and Saint-Loup's great aunt, Mme. de Villeparisis, who is writing her memoirs.He also encounters Saint-Loup's uncle once again, the enigmatic M. de Charlus who offers to be the narrator's mentor in his quest to conquer high society.The narrator also makes the acquaintance of the beautiful Duchesse de Guermantes, a woman who long fascinating him due to her surnames romantic association with the countryside where he spent his childhood summers.Furthermore, in this volume, the narrator first becomes intimately acquainted with Albertine, the great love of his life.

Perhaps my favorite passage was a long description of the narrator's first visit to Mme. Villeparisis salon, of all the interesting characters he meets there, and of the conversations that take place.Proust's painstaking description truly summons up this world which seized to exist over a century ago for the reader.

If you are interesting in tackling "the Guermantes Way" I recommend you get your hands on this superior translation. ... Read more

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The “Guermantes Way,” in this the third volume of In Search of Lost Time, refers to the path that leads to the Duc and Duchess de Guermantes’s château near Combray. It also represents the narrator’s passage into the rarefied “social kaleidoscope” of the Guermantes’s Paris salon, an important intellectual playground for Parisian society, where he becomes a party to the wit and manners of the Guermantes’s drawing room. Here he encounters nobles, officers, socialites, and assorted consorts, including Robert de Saint Loup and his prostitute mistress Rachel, the Baron de Charlus, and the Prince de Borodino.

For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Proust is Tough
Proust's writings are not for the casual reader; but for someone who is interested in great literature no one has ever written better.This part of his long trilogy is maybe the pearl.

Wonderful and challenging
In this third volume of Marcel Proust's epic In Search of Lost Time, the narrator gains entrance into the Duc and Duchesse de Gurmante's chateau near Combray and becomes more intimate with the elite Parisian society, he provides a detailed portrait of the mechanics of social interaction and the underlying driving forces that motivate the bourgeoisie. He encounters nobles, officers, aristocrats, and of course his friends Robert de Saint Loup and his prostitute Rachel, and the Baron de Charlus at a number of extravagant and detailed parties. Proust situates the reader in the world that he vividly experienced, and it's a totally absorbing experience. We see Oriane Guermantes calculate every social decision like a four-star general; she refuses to show at the parties which expect her and forces herself into the parties which did not to draw consideration to herself. Guermantes Way is also, somewhat surprisingly a much more political section of the book. It deals with military strategy, with socialism, anti-Semitism, and class struggle. However, unlike the previous volumes, the last one hundred pages slow down to a near stand-still in pure social observation. Readers often cite this section of the work as the most difficult, and their judgment is correct. The pace is simply comatose here, but it picks up again for those with enough patience to get through it. The Guermantes Way is a powerful and beautiful centerpiece to Proust's great novel.

save your money for the new translation
Perhaps the most exciting publishing venture of the 21st century is the new Penguin/Viking translations of "In Search of Lost Time," as the book is now (and more accurately) titled. I have read the first two volumes in this series, and they are a wonderful improvement over the rather dusty prose of Scott Montcrief and his colleagues. I am betting that the new "The Guermantes Way" will match them. It's available in hardcover (the ISBN is 0670033170) and paperback (0143039229) from Amazon. The translator is Mark Trehane. Go for them! -- Dan Ford

High Society
In the previous two volumes of IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, we have seen the young Marcel fantasize about love (in the persons of Gilberte and Albertine) and high society (in the person of the Duchesse de Guermantes). The bulk of THE GUERMANTES WAY's 819 pages is concerned with two parties involving the glitterati of fin-de-siecle Paris.

At the party of the literary Mme de Villeparisis, Marcel gains his first admittance to the world of the nobility and gets invited to an evening of his prized Dutchess, whom he had gazed on from afar when she attended church services in Combray, amid the tombs of her ancestors. Sometimes, however, when you get your heart's desire, there is that nagging question: "Is this all there is?"

At one point in the latter party, Swann says to Marcel that "one can't have a thousand years of feudalism in one's blood with impunity." The novel ends with the Guermantes about to leave for yet a more empyrean social gathering, to which Marcel is not even sure he is invited. (As we see in the next volume, he is invited and does attend.) At the very end, the Duke puts off seeing a dying friend and begins carping about his wife's choice of shoes.

We see the beginnings of Marcel's disenchantment with the social scene. Since this volume covers such a short span of time, we do not yet see the effect of his grandmother's death on the young narrator. We leave him, stunned and confused, at the threshhold of a personal triumph that has already lost much of its luster for him.

As I re-read Proust's great series, I am struck by how much I missed the first time I read it years ago. Many reviewers are struck by the length of the scenes describing the parties, but now I find that there is so much going on, and so many undercurrents, that the interior action passes quickly. Most of the action takes place in Marcel's mind as he encounters these gods of society and their hangers-on as they duel for position in their circles.

"Thus I beheld the pair of them," muses Marcel, "divorced from that name Guermantes in which long ago I had imagined them leading an unimaginable life, now just like other men and other women...."

In touch with the high spheres of society
The third volume of In search of Lost Time begins with the moving of Marcel's family to an apartment in a palace, next to the which Charlus lives. This is where Marcel begins to deal with the highest society: the Guermantes family, which seemed so distant to him in his child fantasies, becomes soon part of his life. He goes to parties and meetings, where he can see Mme Cambremer, duchess Orianne and her husband, Charlus, Odette, Swann, etc. The words of the narrator are as thorough as his sight, and he describes for pages and pages the dialogues and behaviours that take place during such encounters. In this volume is where we begin to find the diferent sexual tendencies that will be later explored. As Marcel keeps visiting Saint-Loup, Mr. Charlus develops an interest in Marcel, therefore he begins to play a series of odd games: Charlus will have outbursts of rage as Marcel's shallowness becomes clear to the count.
The snobism and everchanging criteria, through the which political circles consider someone as part of the group of desireable relations, are shown through the detailed depiction of the Dreyfuss affair. The fears of society are suddenly embodied in the character of this german diplomatic, who apparently is spying on the french government. But, even worse, he is a jew. The colliding opinions about this affair divide society. In the midst of this social confusion, Marcel is but a quiet witness, whose interventions seem to stop in invitations and references to other great names of society. One of his favorite activities during this parties is to find and reconstruct the family ties between the different participants. An interesting relationship develops between Marcel and Orianne and her husband, while Charlus finds this to be of bad taste. Marcel will know through these people the details surrounding Saint-Loup's romance with an "indecent" dancer. He knew something from the days he spent visiting his friends while he was in service.
By the end of this volume we get to see Swann's decadence in the high circles, while his wife, Odette, seems to gain more terrain everyday. Swann tries to mantain his contact with the Guermantes, but they are less interested in him as time goes by... and not even his revelation of being in the route of death, due to an ailment, captures their interest. Even more, they don't believe him.
Proust keeps working in describing the defyning coordenates of this world of looks and absurd, hollow judgements. The life of the court parties is ruled by worldly signs, theatrical effects and empty forms. Although the character's fantasies surrounding the name of the Guermantes crumbles after he meets them and find them to be... just humans (and not the corporeal reality behind the images he used to see with endearment in Combray); although this fact, he is more and more fascinated by their importance between the other aristocrats. His desire is renewed by the inclusion of a third party that desires to establish contact, or to hold good relations with the Guermantes. It is the game of snobism, in which fear seems to be the main tool. ... Read more

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"To understand a profound thought is to have, at the moment one understands it, a profound thought oneself; and this demands some effort, a genuine descent to the heart of oneself . . . Only desire and love give us the strength to make this effort. The only books that we truly absorb are those we read with real appetite, after having worked hard to get them, so great had been our need of them."

Reading was, for Marcel Proust, more than the pursuit of knowledge: a truly spiritual activity, it was a means of transforming and transcending the self. By reading great authors, he contends, we not only learn of great ideas, but are enriched by the fruits of the world’s most inspirational minds.

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"Discovering Proust is like wandering through a totally unfamiliar land and finding it peopled with kindred spirits and sister souls and fellow countrymen . . . They speak our language, our dialect, share our blind-spots and are awkward in exactly the same way we are, just as their manner of lacing every access of sorrow with slapstick reminds us so much of how we do it when we are sad and wish to hide it, that surely we are not alone and not as strange as we feared we were. And here lies the paradox. So long as a writer tells us what he and only he can see, then surely he speaks our language." --from the preface by André Aciman

For The Proust Project, editor André Aciman asked twenty-eight writers--Shirley Hazzard, Lydia Davis, Richard Howard, Alain de Botton, Diane Johnson, Edmund White, and others--to choose a favorite passage from In Search of Lost Time and introduce it in a brief essay. Gathered together, along with the passages themselves (and a synopsis that guides the reader from one passage to the next), these essays form the perfect introduction to the greatest novel of the last century, and the perfect gift for any Proustian.

FSG will co-publish The Proust Project in a deluxe edition with Turtle Point Press, Books & Co., and Helen Marx Books.
... Read more

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In a remarkable instance of literary and philosophical interpretation, the incomparable Gilles Deleuze reads Marcel Proust's work as a narrative of an apprenticeship-more precisely, the apprenticeship of a man of letters. Considering the search to be one directed by an experience of signs, in which the protagonist learns to interpret and decode the kinds and types of symbols that surround him, Deleuze conducts us on a corollary search-one that leads to a new understanding of the signs that constitute A la recherche du temps perdu.

In Richard Howard's graceful translation, augmented with an essay that Deleuze added to a later French edition, Proust and Signs is the complete English version of this work. Admired as an imaginative and innovative study of Proust and as one of Deleuze's more accessible works, Proust and Signs stands as the writer's most sustained attempt to understand and explain the work of art.

Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was professor of philosophy at the University of Paris, Vincennes-St. Denis. With Félix Guattari, he coauthored Anti-Oedipus (1983) and A Thousand Plateaus (1987). Among his other works are Cinema 1 (1986), Cinema 2 (1989), Foucault (1988), The Fold (1992), Essays Critical and Clinical (1997), and Francis Bacon (2003), all published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Richard Howard has received the American Book Award and the PEN Translation Medal. He teaches in the School of the Arts at Columbia University. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Only Art Will Save Us Now
A somewhat peculiar but readable book by Deleuze. Deleuze examines Proust's massive epic in order to look for understandings of love, time, and art. He concludes that art is the only way we really have to understand truth, all other truths denying the interpretation we are always making of the world, even its seemingly most basic parts.

Gilles Way
A short and rewarding study, more remarkable as a defense of Art than an analysis of Proust, per se. While Deleuze has many knowing admirers,I have generally found his work difficult and conceptually self-indulgent, despite having some background in post-modernist Fr. thought. This book I found very "approachable" since the Proustian theme grounds Deleuze's discourse. There were still things I didn't understand but for all that, a fascinating commentary on aspects of Proust that is, moreover, perhaps , an excellent introduction to Deleuze. Now I must go back and again try his -- you name it. Not to mention a return to Proust.

An excellent semiotic reading of Proust
I am doing a research on Proust which is very difficult but at the same time satisfactory to read. Deleuze makes an excellent reading of Proust and the meaning behind his text by referring to the certain linguistic signs. It says a lot about the reasons or the motives of the author behind the text; in other words, the truth behind the masks of words. You must read it definitely if you really like Proust or are working on his worldview. It says a lot about the age too, the Belle Epoque.

An original approach to Proust and a valuable intro to G.D
Proust is usually examined in terms of the themes of time and memory. He is, indeed, one of the few writers who has genuinely interesting philosphical insights into these phenomenon. Deleuze, however, prefers to concentrate on the circulation of signs within Proust's work. The apprenticeship of Marcel as a writer is conceived of as an exploration of different kinds of sign: the signs of love, the signs of bourgious life, the signs of art. Marcel is a decoder and producer of these different signs. He passes through the signs given in experience to arrive at the (superior) signs of art.
As someone interested in both Deleuze and Proust, I found this book consistently stimulating. What i think is especially refreshing (and philosophically valuable) in Deleuze is his ability to generate concepts from the literary text he is reading - rather then imposing prefashioned categories onto the work. His book on Kafka is particularly rewarding in this respect. ... Read more

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An avid critic and translator, Marcel Proust is best remembered as author of the semiautobiographical long novel of French expressionism, The Remembrance of Things Past.

This title, Marcel Proust, part of Chelsea House Publishers’ Modern Critical Views series, examines the major works of Marcel Proust through full-length critical essays by expert literary critics. In addition, this title features a short biography on Marcel Proust, a chronology of the author’s life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. ... Read more

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A collection of critical essays on Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" arranged in chronological order of publication. ... Read more