In search of lost paperbacks

I don’t, as a rule, re-read books; life is short, and I’ll be doing well if I get through a fraction of the tomes in the Western Canon, let alone make a start on world literature, so there’s no time to go over old ground. The main exception I make is for books that I read when I was far too young to appreciate them. I was, you may be unsurprised to learn, an insufferably pretentious youth, and eschewed the questionable delights of young adult fiction for the likes of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, which, while they didn’t go completely over my head at the time, were definitely more rewarding when I revisited them with more experience of life.

That said, I have just finished reading Swann’s Way for the third time. On both previous occasions I had intended to go on to read the subsequent parts of the series, but had been frustrated by the fact that I did not posses any of them, and was reluctant to make the investment required for their purchase, since I was far from sure that I would see the task through.

My original copy of Swann’s Way was a battered old paperback that I picked up in a hostel in San Francisco more than twenty years ago. Every second-hand bookstore and flea market seems to have one, but despite much searching I have never found a used copy of any of the other volumes, which is perhaps a sign that lots of people, like me, start the heptalogy with fine intentions, but never get past book one.

Anyway, this summer I resolved to try again, since even the little I have read of Proust’s work has heavily influenced my own writing style, and, with digital copies available for pennies, my economic excuse doesn’t really hold water any longer. I’m just about at the end of In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, and I’m not flagging too much yet, though I probably will take a break before I get into The Guermantes Way.

So that’s why I’ve not been blogging much this past while; I’ve been lost in the drawing-rooms and country estates of Belle Époque France. There are worse places to spend a summer…