h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"I had never stopped to think that man, a creature obviously less rudimentary in structure than the sea-urchin or even the whale, is nevertheless still unprovided with a certain number of essential organs, and notable possesses none that will serve for kissing. The place of this absent organ he supplies with his lips, and thereby arrives perhaps at a slightly more satisfying result than if her were reduced to caressing the beloved with a horny tusk."



Gif

Yes he's such a little tinker. Proust porn!

Porn? That wasn't the horny tusk I had in mind!

Gif

What tusk was that?

Seriously I do love though the way he teases sometimes with his very imaginative naughtinesses.

Phew! Finally finished book 3 (and therefore Volume 1). I'm gonna take a break for a while if that's OK!

I have to say that I didn't find much in 3 to enjoy. Waaaay too much conversation between (deliberately) obnoxious French aristos. I think you said you thought Proust was even deliberately boring in this book...?

Trouble is (and this *always* happens to me!) I've read too much to quit now, so I'll have to keep going in the hopes it regains its former glories.

As a side note - putting my battered, dog-eared copy of Vol 1 next to the pristine, unopened Vol 2 I bought the same day...

Gif

This is completely irrelevant to Proust, but I had to share it anyway.

The first of my inter-Proust reads is Salmon of Doubt, where I found this:

>I have always been absurdly, ridiculously tall. To give you an idea - when we went on school expeditions to Interesting and Improving Places, the form master wouldn't say "Meet under the clock tower," or "Meet under the War Memorial," but "Meet under Adams." I was at least as visible as anything else on the horizon, and could be repositioned at will.



Gif

Thanks for sharing the juxtaposition of the those 2 things...

When I read Proust I did it during a very intensive 3 month period with no gaps. I think that does affect the way the novel builds. I got profoundly depressed during the dreariness of his middle age of volume3 and found the insight he obtained at the end of the novel to be quite thrilling, and uplifting, when he seemed to finally understand about lost time.

Did you get that excitement when his foot knocked against that bit of uneven ground and all those previous experiences suddenly made sense?

Oh dear have just re-read your post 65 properly. Does that mean you haven't finished the whole thing then? I think there maybe some confusion going on.

It's to do with books and volumes.

3 months? Blimey, I've been at it over a year already!

Yeah, I'm nowhere near the end. I have a 2-volume set, and I've just finished Volume 1. But somehow - I don't think the plot spoiler is going to give too much away! I've got the impression he's still quite young at this point, not middle aged.

You should see the 'plot synopsis' at the end of this volume: 'Elstir shows the narrator a new way of looking at Balbec. Saint Loup marries. The author's mother is ill.' - and that's, like, 350 pages!

Gif

Oh god I feel awful. All this time I was thinking you were ploughing your way through it like I did as a young 'un, utterly besotted with the thing.

But yes it's not exactly giving the plot away.

No, I started out going for it big time - 50 pages a day, come rain or shine. And I realised I was getting through it fine, but I wasn't really taking it in. So I've slowed right down - 10 pages or so a day most days, something like that. And that was when I really started getting into it, noticing the poetry and imagery and all that stuff.

Except book 3 which has just dragged on interminably

Different strokes, and all that.

Gif

But there's worse to come

Yes different strokes. But it is quite funny

>But there's worse to come

Don't say things like that

Gif

So c'mon man are you onto the second of your 2 volume set yet?

You truly don't want to be one of the many who don't make it do you?

*Gives Gif a short sharp kick (friendly ) up the backside.

Oh yeah, I'll get there, don't worry. I just have the unexpectedly-tedious Time Traveller's Wife to finish first and then I'll be right onto it.

I was just using the inter-volume break to catch up on some other reading

Gif

OK, here we go. I've got through Part 1 of Book 4 (only 30-odd pages), and I have to say it'sa *major* step up from Book 3

He's back to lots of nature imagery (watching a bee fertilise a flower) and gay sex has suddenly entered the plot. It's odd reading it, knowing that he's describing himself but in such a way as to not let others know he's describing himself!

Proust on Gaydar:
"From the beginning of this scene a revolution, in my unsealed eyes, had occured in M. de Charlus, as complete, as immediate as if he had been touched by a magician't wand. Until then, because I had not understood, I had not seen. The vice (we use the word for convenience only), the vice of each of us accompanies him through life after the manner of the familiar genius who was invisible to men so long as they were unaware of his presence. Our goodness, our meanness, our name, our social relations do not disclose themselves to the eye, we carry them hidden within us. Even Ulysses did not at once recognise Athena. But the gods are immediately perceptible to one another, as quickly like to like, and so too had M. de Charlus been to Jupien. Until that moment I had been, in the presence of M. de Charlus, in the position of an absent-minded man who, standing before a pregnant woman whose distended outline he has failed to remark, persists, while she smilingly reiterates: 'Yes, I am a little tired just now,' in asking her indiscreetly: 'Why, what is the matter with you?' But let someone say to him: 'She is expecting a child,' suddenly he catches sight of her abdomen and ceases to see anything else. It is the explanation that opens our eyes; the dispelling of an error gives us an additional sense."

There's more I highlighted in pencil - perhaps another time

Gif

I've been a Bad Proustian lately... I've made a conscious decision to cut down on the amount of time I spend reading in order to get a little more sleep. Sadly, our mate Marcel has been the main casualty of this, so I haven't read a great deal lately... will try harder, I promise

Gif

Oh the excuses people find...

Sweet dreams though

Found a nice section on him remembering his Grandma and how he wishes he could have spent more time with her while she was alive.

I know it doesn't sound like the most original thing in the world when I put it like that, but it was very well written. And, at over a page long, I'm not about to type it all out

How're you getting on? I haven't seen you around for a while...

Gif

Yes I remember that about his grandmother - he really loved her, and so much of the novel deals with loss.

Yes I've been posting a bit less of late. Maybe its a phase? I've just had less to say really and felt a bit disconected from some convos...and a bit irritable with them

But always good to hear from you Gif