[Cyclopean Squid]

4. In Search of Lost Time - Proust

Wretched, miserable, execrable, abysmal book. To be fair I only read Swann's Way and Within a Budding Grove, but it was by far the dumbest thing I have ever read. Pretentious, plodding, pointless. How many pages can you read about a church steeple? To get through this book, you'll have to conquer 12. In a row. How little can happen in the 1000 pages of the 2 volumes (of 7 total) that I read? How about having tea with Madame Swann, and then going to the beach. That's it. Maybe there's something I'm not getting. Maybe I'll try it again some day. Much of the prose is beautiful, but the plot is so uncompelling that it hardly matters.

[Borges]

It's been called the literary equivalent of Einstein's physics.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

I agree with your assessment. Proust was rather narcissistic

[RightWhale]

Proust is required reading anyway since the book is referenced by so many. To see what is going on might be near impossible without reading the whole thing six pages a day for a few years to the end because the secret is at the end but won't mean anything without the rest. It certainly helps to read some of Proust's sources.