Please use categories and/or tags when writing your blog posts. Use categories to indicate the author (Proust or Arlt etc.), and tags for key concepts or topics covered. Remember also to include a question for discussion.
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Zzz
Posted by: Justin K
If I’m being 100 percent honest, this book was a harder read than I expected. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t sat down and read a proper book in a while or if the pacing was extremely slow. I found myself constantly constantly staring at the same paragraph for 15 minutes, restarting it […] read full post >>
Marcel Proust “Combray” – Memory as Representation
Posted by: Radha Kumar
When I read novels, I expect to be immersed, anxiously turning the page to know what happens next. Not even just pertaining to novels, but video games too. Otherwise I just drop it. I can’t quite do that to Marcel Proust’s “Combray”, and I never expected to feel that immersion with the book. I was […] read full post >>
What a quirky guy!
Posted by: Adrian Chan
I personally had a blast reading Nadja, a peek into the mind of someone very eccentric but on the verge of being mentally unhinged. To be honest however, the pacing is awfully slow, it’s a type of atmospheric writing that requires patience but a manner of reading that doesn’t take the story seriously, but still […] read full post >>
What did the “coming-of-age story” genre do to Robert Arlt that made him come out swinging like that?! and what is this arsonist child doing here?!!
Posted by: jumarkakis
Hi again blog :)) Thank the heavens this week the reading had normal lenght sentences (looking at you, Combray). I absolutely adored reading Mad Toy. The pacing of the story was amazing, and I really felt as if I was looking at snapshots of Silvio’s life. I thought I would feel the gaps in the […] read full post >>
Nadja : Love or An attachment to survive the lows of life?
Posted by: Hasfariza Hassan
I found Nadja interesting because I felt that it had some similarities with Proust in how the story utilizes a lot of internal monologue and internal thought processes. This parallel of self-identity and figuring out memories is intriguing. Putti... read full post >>
Nadja in the very unorganized stacks
Posted by: june
Hello all, and welcome back to the cottage. The stacks are toppling already--not the best of signs, but hopefully I should be able to get these tremors under control with a good spell of focus. I won't dally with describing the organizationa... read full post >>
Nadja in the very unorganized stacks
Posted by: june
Hello all, and welcome back to the cottage. The stacks are toppling already--not the best of signs, but hopefully I should be able to get these tremors under control with a good spell of focus. I won't dally with describing the organizationa... read full post >>
Nadja : Love or An attachment to survive the lows of life?
Posted by: Hasfariza Hassan
I found Nadja interesting because I felt that it had some similarities with Proust in how the story utilizes a lot of internal monologue and internal thought processes. This parallel of self-identity and figuring out memories is intriguing. Putti... read full post >>
3. Being Intelligent is a Bad Career Move
Posted by: Aaliyah Bist
I think everyone took a long drawn sigh of relief reading this after Proust. read full post >>
Arlt – hypocrisy at every turn (╥‸╥)
Posted by: Julie ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
So, before I start on the novel, I learned a new word today: picaresque ᐠ( ᐛ )ᐟ I found myself really enjoying this format, with each chapter feeling like a short story woven together by a constant protagonist. I also just enjoyed the book in general! The first chapter, the band of thieves, felt wholesome […] read full post >>
all roads lead to bridge scouting
Posted by: Caffeinated Duck
I wasn’t sure how to start this blog. I think I sat here staring at an empty screen, just gathering my thoughts for quite a while. I read Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt this morning, started my day early and immersed myself into the streets of Argentina. Reading the book was a breeze when it […] read full post >>
Nadja: Pretentious Bland French Man x Manic Pixie Dream Girl
Posted by: Kimberly
My first thought when I read the initial couple pages of Nadja was… this man sounds annoying. My lasting thought when I finished Nadja was… this man is still annoying. It’s probably a mix of my distaste for the writing style, and his narration itself. The writing and flow was disorienting and confusing to me, maybe because it […] read full post >>
Lovebombed by Nadja
Posted by: QT
Hello again! For this blog I’m going blindly off of my instinctual interpretation and will watch the lecture after so that my rant is as pure to my thoughts as possible. (Because for some odd reason I felt strongly about this novel…) In honesty, I thought that the book could have begun in the second part of the novel. However,... read full post >>
Nadja: Love, Madness, or just a Muse?
Posted by: M. Aurelia
To be honest, Nadja is definitely not the typical “romance”. Instead of a love story, it feels more like a surrealist experiment or a diary where Breton uses a woman as a mirror to figure out his own identity. It’s a messy mix of philosophy, Paris street life, and random photographs, which makes the whole […] read full post >>
Mad Toy, a well executed coming of age story?
Posted by: zshaik03
I want to begin by mentioning that I found this novel much easier to read than Proust. I was constantly engaged and interested in learning more about the main character. The amount of dialogue and the rate of story progression almost made Mad Toy seem like a playwright. As a result, I feel like the […] read full post >>
