Swann's Way: Combray: I Sing the Body Electric: 07/17/09
I'm on my third week of reading Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann).

The thirty pages a week seems to be working. Proust tends to ramble, sticking to a topic for about that length of time. From roughly pages 60 to 90, the young protagonist describes his grandmother and the time he spent with her.

From the way he lovingly describes his grandmother I can tell they were close. She though isn't someone he clings to like he does to his mother when he's sent to bed early. Instead, she is someone to pal around with. They go to church together and she has very firm opinions about places.

Grandmother isn't mother but she's the perfect grandmother. The protagonist's distinction between two forms of perfection: mother and grandmother made me think of that great Twilight Zone episode "I Sing the Body Electric" by Ray Bradbury. The grandmother in episode is a robot created to be the perfect grandmother for three children reeling from the death of their mother.

If you want to watch the Twilight Zone episode while thinking about Swann's Way, it's available on the CBS website.

Previous posts: Lisa's First Word, Baby Mine.

books | fiction | Marcel Proust | 1913

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