by jkvincent | Sep 9, 2022 | novels |
In my Proust reading group we are reading the translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and I’m so glad. I know some readers find Moncrieff’s prose too ornate or outdated. Roger Shattuck finds “annoying bloomers and occasional excesses of style.”[1] Lydia Davis, who has a...
by jkvincent | Aug 31, 2022 | novels |
I saw the Argentinian director Maria Alvarez’s film “Le Temps Perdu,” about a Proust reading group of octogenarians in Buenos Aires, at Film Forum in New York. It was wonderful, although I napped a little. Things I noticed: how little you know about these...
by jkvincent | Jun 12, 2022 | haiku |
Lydia Davis says that while translating the first volume of Proust she began to notice “how he was incorporating alexandrines into his sentences or building parallel structures, with liberal use of assonance and alliteration…” As a result,...
by jkvincent | Jun 11, 2022 | novels |
We finished Proust Volume Two. We all laughed out loud when Marcel tried to kiss Albertine, his head swelled to contain the whole universe and then some. We loved the faces changing over time, successions of selves, faces viewed by other selves, how the girls are the...
by jkvincent | Jan 19, 2022 | haiku |
I went for a long walk yesterday and when I got back a very heavy box was sitting at the foot of our mailbox. I assumed it must be for Anthony. Some new rocks for his aquariums? But then I saw the label from Yaguchi Shoten, a used bookstore in Tokyo’s Jinbochō...
