“Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”
Marcel Proust
With this final volume of In Search of Lost Time we reach the end of the journey for the groups that have been studying Proust for the past two years, and I complete my seventh tour through this mountain of modernism. Each visit reveals new nuggets and gasping moments.
If you are interested in reading Proust from the beginning, please watch our website for the next Proust cycle that will commence early in 2025 and make sure you are signed up for our newsletter in which we announce new studies.
Here is how one Salonista describes the pleasure and work of reading Proust: ”This is a velvet jewel of a book that demands the attention of a lover full of enchantment and obsession, we need not get impatient as all good lovers perfect their art in taking their time.”
Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although humans are tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealised experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that moulds our consciousness.
Eleven meeting virtual study (on Zoom) from 18 September – 11 December 2024 (N.B. no meetings on 2 and 30 October)
Recommended edition: Penguin Classics Finding Time Again (Patterson/Prendergast) ISBN: 9780141180366 (the Vintage Classics edition: Time Regained ISBN: 978009936271 5 is also acceptable)
£330 for 11 meetings, includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes and discussion notes.