Within a Budding Grove: Madame Swann at Home: Nanowrimo: 11/13/09
Here I am nearly halfway through this year's Nanowrimo and I've cracked open the second volume of In Search of Lost Time, Within a Budding Grove (A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs) and I am laughing at the way the two big projects in my life come together.

Marcel (the protagonist) is back to narrate the first section of Within a Budding Grove and he is focusing on his own life. The Swanns may have returned to Combray but he is most concerned with his romance with Gilberte, his love of the theater and his desire to write a great novel. He, though, is failing miserably at writing his novel. He finds any number of things to do other than write. Mostly he woos Gilberte and he goes to the theater. His theater love ends up becoming an obsession and his parents begin to worry about his health. They are told to keep him from going. I doubt, though, that will work.

As with Swann's Way, I plan on taking the book thirty pages a week. I'll post my thoughts on the book weekly and see where the book takes me. At that rate it will take me well into 2010. I will probably finish this volume around the start of spring.

Swann's Way posts:

Lisa's First Word, Baby Mine, I Sing the Body Electric, The Lady in Pink, Bleeding Gums Murphy, Caturday, Cherry Blossoms, Marge Simpson, Liana Telfer, Bender in Love, Margaret Dumont, Hyacinth Bucket, Rose, Mildred Krebs, Pepé Le Pew, Jack Harness, Cordelia Chase, Saffron.

Within a Budding Grove posts:

Nanowrimo.

books | fiction | Marcel Proust | 1919

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