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Long out of print, the many adaptations that Russell has done of famous operas are finally collected again in 3 volumes, in the wake of his highly successful massive recent adaptation of Wagner¹s Ring of the Nibelung. This first volume presents his adaptation of one of Mozart¹s most famous works, a farcical tale mixed with fantasy. The story begins as the Queen of the Night sets Prince Tamino on a quest to rescue her daughter, Pamina from the evil Sarastro. On the way, he meets the bird-catcher Papageno, who is ³persuaded² to help Tamino in his quest. Tamino¹s spiritual quest is counterpoised with Papageno¹s own earthly search for his one true love, Papagena. Both couples¹ strivings are juxtaposed with the eternal conflict between Sarastro and the Queen of the Night. ... Read more

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Simplistic yet evocative full-color art
Remembrance Of Things Past Part Two: Within A Budding Grove is the second novel of an English-language, graphic novel adaptation and illustrated by Stephane Heuet of Marcel Proust's classic work of European literature. The simplistic yet evocative full-color art and the delicate lettering bring the formal style of the nineteenth-century era to life in this enchanting and attention engaging presentation. Highly Recommended! ... Read more

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This comparison of the narrative techniques of two of the twentieth century's most important writers of prose combines theoretical analysis and text study of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu and Beckett's trilogy of novels, Molloy, Malone dies, and The Unnamable. James Reid's study is an important contribution to the critical literature, and offers fresh perspectives on the crucial significance of the Recherche and the trilogy in the context of the twentieth-century novel. ... Read more

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WAITER, FRESH PAJAMAS!
The pretext for this chatty meditation on Proust's final year was a 1922 dinner at the Hotel Majestic in Paris to celebrate a new production at the Ballets Russe. Hosted by an English couple who knew the players, it put Proust, Diaghilev, Picasso, Stravinsky, and Joyce in one place at one time--to little effect. Proust exchanged only brief pleasantries with the charm-free Joyce: on this night, the fictive planets of Dublin and Paris did not even sideswipe.

This book is actually quite Proustian: shapeless, baggy chitchat, always entertaining and sometimes informative, about Proust's world and work, especially toward the end. In his cork-lined sickroom, Proust was engulfed by newspapers, manuscripts, opiates, and café au lait. Few were allowed in, and fewer still occasioned a change of pajamas. He finished drafting the whole of his long novel but was unable to correct the final volumes, which were edited by his brother and published after Proust's death.

The key controversy nowadays is how gay Proust was (or how he was gay) and how gay he made his fictional world by contrast. A better account of this will be found in William Carter's "Proust in Love," which really delivers the dirt. Feast on Carter first, then this book will go down as smoothly as a flute of dessert champagne.

too many errors, not enough style
I had high hopes for this book.It sounded as if it would be full of juicy anecdotes about colorful people at a brilliant time to be in Paris.However, I soon learned that it fell into the category of my least favorite kind of book: the one you can't read for content because there are so many glaring errors jumping at you off the page.The author uses "whom" incorrectly too many times.He constantly spells "Huysmans" as "Huysman."The actress Rejane shows up once as Rejanne. (I can't get my accent marks to work today, sorry.)There are some impossible verb tense shifts which had me checking to make sure English is not a second language for him. He even manages to refer once to "La Prisonniere" with a "Le."The irony is that in an afterwords, he thanks people for helping him correct his grammar.One can only imagine what the original manuscript looked like.

Readers in search of interesting anecdotes will find a few good ones scattered here and there.Some of the quoted epigrams are, indeed, highly quotable.I especially enjoyed reading the menu of the dishes served at this dinner.I even reread those pages more than once.The best part of the book is the detailed description of Proust's death, his funeral, and the procession through Paris to the cemetery.I kept thinking this would be a wonderful Masterpiece Theatre teleseries... to have the most celebrated names of the Modernist movement at the same dinner talking to each other.But the gathering seems to have been more of a stunt...a photo-op with no cameras present.

I was willing to go along with the author on most things until he lost me early on page 57 with the following statement: "...but some passages in 'Temps perdu' seem distinctly autobiographical."Gosh!--(sarcasm button switched to high) do you really think so?That's really going out on a limb.

Extending Proust
The first part of the book is a fascinating examination of the guest list at a famous party given by Sydney and Violet Schiff at the Majestic Hotel in Paris near the end of Proust's life.Proust was one of the guests; so was James Joyce, although they apparently had little of substance to discuss.The party section is a bit tedious, if only because my expectation was to learn more about Proust from the outset.Once I finished the book, however, I felt that it was one of the best on Proust that I have read, probing his relationships with others as he finished his great work.I liked Ronald Hayman's biography of Proust for its examination of his creative process and the use of involuntary memory.This book is a good companion to Hayman's. ... Read more

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This original study reevaluates central texts of the modernist canon--Eliot's early poetry including The Waste Land, Joyce's Ulysses and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past--by examining sexual energies and identifications in them that are typically regarded as perverse. Colleen Lamos' analysis of the operations of gender and sexuality in these texts reveals conflicts, concerning the definition of masculine heterosexuality, which cut across the aesthetics of modernism. What emerges is a reconsideration of modernist literature as a whole, gender categories, and the relation between errant sexuality and literary "mistakes." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Check it out of the library
My review is based only on the Proust chapter; I bought the book because "errancy" is an important element in my work on Proust. In general, this chapter is a disaster, but to her credit, Lamos does a good job articulating some aspects of error, and some of her comments on thenarrating/narrated "I" opposition are worth rereading. First, Lamos NEVERcites from the French text!She only works with a translation(Montrcrieff/Kilmartin).No credible scholar would make claims about atext based on its translation.Provide translations for an Englishspeaking audience, surely, but if you are basing your interpretation onwhat Proust wrote, then you must address the exact words he used, andProust wrote in French. Second, Lamos succumbs to multi-culti/queertheory newspeak: "This exchange of places between the desiring readerand the desiring text...is analogous to the relation between penetrator andpenetrated in the economy of sodomy" (180); the hero's nocturnalwanderings in Venice are "an allegory of anal sex" (187)[certainly somereference, any reference to the words Proust actually uses is called forhere...but no]; "The body of the text, originally the enclosure of theself and the site of masturbatory pleasure, is fantasized as the body ofthe other, penetrated and mastered by a desire that circulates according tothe economy of sodomy" (190); "The hero's first mistake is to getto the bottom of Albertine, whose illegibility is a paradigm for theerrancy of all texts" (191) [that's right, "all" texts]; referring toProust's preface to his translation of Ruskin, "Combining his Sodomicand Gomorrahan aesthetics, Proust imagines that this hymenal 'mist whichour eager eyes would like to pierce is the last word of the painter'sart'" (193); "The structural opposition between the narrating andnarrated 'I' parallels another well-worn, dubious distinction: the phallusand the penis" (198); "The ambiguous factual/fictive status of thetext is thus directly linked to the enigma of lesbianism....by posing femalesame-sex desire as an occult mystery, Proust fictionalizes fact andfactualizes fiction, making it impossible to account for one in terms ofthe other" (199); "Above all, the novel incites the desire to expose thehero's-and Proust's-homosexuality" (215).Above all?Above all!Lamos'goals are commendable: to show the "errancies" or heterogeneous elements intexts that appear monolithic and coherent.But the outcome is embarrassingand laughable.Her ideas are malformed compared to Sedgwick's, and eventhough her syntax might be less complex than that of "Epistemology of theCloset," her writing in general is poor.She does not develop ideas ormake transitions between paragraphs.It's as if she had a collection ofloose notes and ideas that she's intent on including, even if they makelittle sense as a whole. This book has been well-reviewed here at Amazon. For me it was a total waste of [money].If you do really want to read it, Isuggest you look for it at the library of your local university.

A brilliant reading of crucial modernist texts
Despite having only read the sections of this book that deal with Proust, I feel comfortable saying that Colleen Lamos makes excellent use of wonderful insights in her work.Concentrating on volumes of Proust thatother critics consider "digressions," she is able to addressimportant epistemological issues that cannot be ignored in any true readingof Proust.If you liked Sedgwick, you'll love Lamos--her ideas are just asgood, and her writing infinitely more readable. ... Read more

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Philosophical interpretation of Proust based on the work of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze. ... Read more

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A compelling visual journey augmented by Proust's own words. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Warning - Very disappointing
I bought this book at the same time as Paintings in Proust by Eric Karpeles, which is an amazing companion volume for Proust readers.The title of Ms. Baker's book is Following Proust - Norman Churches, Cathedrals and Paris Paintings.Since this book was presented by Amazon along side Paintings in Proust, I wrongly assumed that I was buying photographs of Norman churches, etc.in villages that had been visited by Marcel Proust with perhaps some insightful commentary.I instead got Ms. Baker's "artistic" little paintings of locales she calls Proustian.Very disappointing.Had I seen this book in a bookstore I would never have purchased it.Having purchased from Amazon, I'm stuck with it. ... Read more

Product Description
Du côté de chez Swann est un roman de Marcel Proust, c'est le premier volume de À la recherche du temps perdu. Il est composé de trois parties, dont les titres sont : Combray, Un amour de Swann et Nom de pays : le nom.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Wonderful book!
This is one of the very very best books I have ever read. It takes a little time to get into his way of writing, but it is worth the trouble. He takes his time, as his characters run repeatedly over almost the same mental tracks, over and over, as they obsess about the women they love. Put like that, it sounds boring and repetitive, but not a bit. He works endless variety into it, and one of the most striking features (and strikingly true-to-life) is the way in which essentially the same line of thought can lead on successive days, or even successive hours, to contradictory conclusions.Besides, a great many passages are just plain beautiful.

At last!A readable copy.
This is not a literary review (We all know what Swann's Way is about), but my way of expressing relief that at last I have a readable copy of it.Out goes my old Folio paperback with its miniscule print -- Hooray!

PROUST ON THE SIDE OF SWANN'S
Marcel PROUST (1871-1922) through his 'RESEARCH OF THE TIMES LOST'(published l913-27) carries us to a mental paradise. Analysis of the sub-conscious is the main characteristic of this fictionised reminiscence, for which the author has used long complex sentences. Otherwise the human characters involved and their situations are described vividly.

"DU COTE'DE CHEZ SWANN" is the first book of this long series. It is based on romance of the COMBRAY of his young age,in which the innocent sensibility of a child is mellowed with the craving sensuality of the adolescent.A number of interesting characters emerge with their contradictions, cruelty, hypocrisy, snobism, irony and mind conditioning. The first book is the best book.

AUNT LEONI enjoys her last days within confines of the bed room. She keeps abreast with the street life through direct window observations supplemented by more informations FRANCOISE and EUTALIE bring. She receives only those friends who know what to tell her but, amusingly, she cannot prevent the priest from droping in and tiring her from his disenchanting show of knowledge.

Family member, kitchen chief, and Personal Secretary to AUNT, FRANCOISE, could not be a less personality, offering from matured life experience 'expert' opinion on many a matter. She respects the time table and wishes of her Mistress in minute details, all the time preparing for the imminent change of command to the narrator's mother. From the long association, Aunt and Francoise know ins and outs of each other's psyche.Aunt on occasions to herself detests FRANCOISE astoundingly,while the latter grudges any small gift the former gives to poor and deformed Eutalie. Francoise shows great affectation on human suffering in abstraction, but derives sadistic pleasure from it under her eyes. She would cause every possible affliction to the kitchen girl - pregnant, in travail or allergic - till she runs away vacating place for Francoise daughter.

An unorthodox M. SWANN is family friend with property in the neighborhood. Often he dines in the house and brings presents as requested or by himself.When he comes,the dinner is prolonged to late night hours and the boy narrator misses the sweet good-night kiss of his mother. The stream-of-consciousness description of the unique night he could retain Mother in his bed-room is breath-taking; it motivated writing this book and the series.

Mother reads out from the book for the boy Proust and with what an elegance: 'Sentences seemed written for her tender and melancholy voice...She infused into the prose a continuous sentimental life!

Parents take the boy to evening walks either to the side of Swann's property, or towards that of GUERMANTES duchy. These provide the first two subtitles of the Proust's"Research".

One evening, he returns tired of a long walk. Then at the very sight of the familiar backyard, "the ground moves for him in that garden without he having to take a single step forward".

The lunch hour is advanced on Saturdays by one hour for Francoise's sake. It impresses all afternoon activities up to heavens: "After the lunch, even the sky appears to have changed face; the sun, conscious of it being Saturday, loiters one hour more on celestial heights".

As the book advances, Swann's image grows slowly and steadily till, in the second part, he is the hero. A non-conformist to the social prejudices of his time and class, humble, kind, considerate, lover of music, literature and women, Proust acclaims him in these words: "Swann of the charming errors of my youth, our life, musium of his time's all familiar portraits, full of leisure and perfumed by all the best of nature".

M. VINTEUIL gave lessons of piano to Aunt Leoni in her early age, and hoped to edit a day his original compositions retained more in memory than in writing. His daughter comes under the influence of a known lesbian and the affectionate father, for her sake, tolerates the woman under his own roofs. Vinteul has been very severe to youngsters for a least misdemeanor,and after this humiliation too, remained a proud fault-finder for others. He dies, however, soon crushed and suffocated. His daughter loved and respected him, but under the spell of carnal pleasure, swallowed all insult the woman inflicted on the old man living or dead.

M. LEGRANDIN is a writer. When at Combray, he showers the young narrator with poetic kindness: "May the heavens be ever blue on your life, my young friend...be careful to keep some open sky on you...All the ear can hear now is the moonlight music on the
flute of silence!"
On the litmus of personal experience, however, he turns out to be only an erudit miser who, with empty words "could build a castle of ethics and a universe of geography without admitting a word of truth" which would benefit a friend.

It is unforgetable to read how a small event like tasting a tea-soaked piece of cake triggered, in narrator's memory, that vivid emergence of the long forgotten Combray. Remember the church tower of Sainte HILLAIRE, omnipresent in the town. It haunts PROUST henceforth wherever he goes as a symbol of something exquisite and intimately his. "I turned into a street, still looking for my way...but..it was in my heart!"

Proust's prose abounds in beautiful expressions as already quoted and as in this praise of BERGOTTE: "With confidence and joy I wept on the writer's page as if in the arms of a rediscovered father",
and thoughtful socio-psychological observations as
"Our social personality is a creation of others' thought. Even the simple act of seeing a person is partly an intellectual act."

The world of Proust is vast and deep. We can touch his soul and meet his Muse only under infinite peace of mind. ... Read more

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ReadHowYouWant publishes a wide variety of best selling books in Large and Super Large fonts in partnership with leading publishers. EasyRead books are available in 11pt and 13pt. type. EasyRead Large books are available in 16pt, 16pt Bold, and 18pt Bold type. EasyRead Super Large books are available in 20pt. Bold and 24pt. Bold Type. You choose the format that is right for you.

This is Volume Volume 1 of 2-Volume Set.To purchase the complete set, you will need to order the other volumes separately: to find them, search for the following ISBNs: 9781427003683

"Swann's Way" is the first part of the Proust's masterpiece "In Search of Lost Times", a book in seven volumes which is also famous as "Remembrance of Things Past". Proust has used flowery language to depict the beauty of France. However, oft times he ends up presenting searing criticism in the garb of wit and humour. Fascinating!

To find more titles in your format, Search in Books using EasyRead and the size of the font that makes reading easier and more enjoyable for you.

Product Description
Marcel Proust (1871–1922) was one of the great geniuses of modern literature. Born in Auteil to wealthy bourgeois parents, he suffered delicate health as a child. During his high school years, he began to frequent salons such as that of Madame Arman, a friend of Anatole France. Troubled by asthma and neuroses, as well as by the deaths of his parents, Proust increasingly withdrew from the outer world and after 1907 lived mainly in a cork-lined room, working at night on his monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past).The World of Proust, as seen by Paul Nadar offers an intimate stroll through the society on which Proust’s novel is based. The heart of the book consists of photographs found in the archive of Paul Nadar. These photographs make up a portrait gallery of Proust’s friends and family--as well as of the aristocrats, artists, bourgeoisie, actresses, and "tarts" who inhabit the novel. Included are portraits of Sarah Bernhardt, Jean Cocteau, Alphonse Daudet, Claude Debussy, Stéphane Mallarmé, Claude Monet, and Emile Zola. Each photograph is accompanied by a detailed caption describing the subject and the character in the novel modeled on that person.Paul Nadar (1856–1939), the son of "Nadar," was part of the famous Nadar atelier. He took over his father’s business and founded the journal Paris Photographe in 1891. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

As a costumer and designer, I find this book engrossing !
Indside, some of the most exultant photographic portraits to be found from the late Victorian period. Contained here, brief bios of family, friends, and acquaintances, who became the inspiration for the work of Proust. The book is bound and printed beautifully. The details of the clothing and accessories are well worth the price of this book.

Wonderfully helpful background to reading Proust
This is must reading (or gazing) for any serious student of Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME.Photographer Paul Nadar was a photographer for whom at one time or another virtually every member of Proust's social set and family sat for at one point or another.The value of this volume for someone reading Proust is twofold:allowing one to see high quality photographic reproductions of many of the actual models for Proust's characters, and providing a vivid picture of the way these people dressed, how they wore their hair, some of their cultural preoccupations, and what their favored accessories were.

I am not a fan of any method of reading Proust that degenerates into a study of Proust's life, that is more concerned with figuring out who the "real" Odette or Albertine or Saint-Loup was.The "real" Odette was a fictional creation by a literary genius of the first rank, and she cannot be found in any of these photographs.Not even in gazing at a photography of Robert de Montesquiou do we see Baron de Charlus, despite our knowledge that he was Proust's most important model for Charlus.But looking at these photographs breaks down the distance between Proust's world and our own.Odette may be based on several real life models, but it is helpful to know what the women that Proust knew looked like in forming our own mental picture of Odette or Gilberte or Oriane or Saint-Loup.I also find it much easier to imagine visually Proust's world after seeing precisely how those members of his social set dressed.

The book also has a great deal to teach about portrait photography in late 19th and early 20th century Paris, at least in an upper class studio.The range of photographs is fascinating, not merely in the posed photos with the subjects dressed in their finest clothes, but in the ones where various individuals appeared "in costume."This includes not merely a series of marvelous photographs of Sarah Bernhardt dressed as various characters, but men and especially women appearing in amateur theatricals.One section features a many of the more celebrated individuals of the time whom Proust either met or loosely based some of his characters on, such as Bernhardt (La Berma), Anatole France (Bergotte), Faure (Vinteuil, though only musically), and Claude Monet (one of several models for Elstir).

Physically, the book resembles a well-produced art book, with a cloth binding, high quality paper, and the highest quality reproductions.It is easily the most attractive book on Proust I have in my rather large collection of Proust titles.Not just a great book on Proust, but a beautiful one as well.

Splendid peek into Proust's beau monde
This is a must for any fan of Proust--you get to see not only what the originals for his most memorable characters (the Ducehsse de Guermantes, Swann, Charlus, Mme. verdurin) looked like, but also the interior of one of the great fin-de-siecle chateaus where one couple (the Prince and Princess Radziwell) lived. The Nadar photographs are sharp, startling and magnificent. I've wanted a book like this for years. ... Read more