WOW this text was hard to read. I found myself getting lost and having to re-read sections an embarrassing amount of times. As I mentioned in my introduction, I don’t pick up books written before the 1980s so staying attentive the whole time and trying to navigate Proust’s long, winding sentences within this book was […]
Honestly, picking up this novel was quite intimidating, especially after not having read one in a while. Right off the bat, I found it difficult to follow, and I ended up rereading sentences in an attempt to figure out what exactly was going on. At some point, though, I realized I was actually making steady […]
Why is Proust considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century? I would like to talk more about this in class, and the themes of Combray. While at times I couldn’t understand what was being said, I could still get a sense of it. For example: […]
As I have expected (from having seen glimpses of the book here and there in my distant past), this is one of the most beautiful texts that I have encountered, and, with every line, I feel that keen jolt of … Continue reading
For me, this whole novel lost me at many parts, but the moments where I did pay attention, it gave me one specific feeling: nostalgia. Proust shows nostalgia exactly as it feels, like being immediately pulled away into the past without choosing to. First of all, I want to answer the lecture’s questions. What do […]
Marcel Proust, “Combray”
A conversation with Farid Laroussi
There’s one common thread in existing discussion about “Combray” that I saw: the book’s difficulty in reading. I agree, it’s a challenging read in the forever long sentences and vivid descriptions of everything and constantly shifting focal points. And as the lecture and conversation video mentions, the story is temporally vague. While there is […]
I would like to share my feelings after
reading Combray! I found it hard to read. It is like I know
most of the words, but when words come together, I could not
understand them anymore. As Professor Beasley-Murray mentions in the lecture…
Sorry if the cuts are bad, the first second of each clip was cut for some reason. It will be better next time.
My question: What does the “in-betweenness” add to the story and reading of the text?
-LS
