Do I Even Like Marcel Anymore: The Captive Volume V: In Search of Lost Time- Proust

We've established that no one reads my blog here- and that's more than okay, but I'll write into the void because my soul compels me to.

I'd like to think I combine the great works of literature, with the desire for light reading entertainment. 

Hence the coupling of Marcel Proust with cozy mysteries and romances to cleanse they palette.

I'm working my way through Marcel Prousts' In Search of Lost Time. I'm reading the Moncrieff, Kilmartin, Enright translation on ebook with audio as a "word for word" combo. As close to word for word as you can get. Neville Jason is not reading my translation. This allows me to stop often and reread a passage. 

I digress... This damn book... So, in this volume I found myself aggressively upset at our narrator. Let's call things what they are.. I was mad at Marcel. Frustrated. Annoyed. If this was Proust's mission- accomplished my boy.

This cover in no way matches the others in this kindle edition.
This makes me violently upset.

I am so happy to be making my way through this novel. 

I will NOT lie. I have no reason to. This novel IS beautiful. It IS reflective. It DOES change you.

However, it IS long. It IS tedious. It DOES induce claustrophobia at some points. 

I've found one of two camps with Proust. Either he's a genius and if you don't love every 400 word sentence, you don't get it. Or, he's boring and his rich boy problems go on for thousands of pages because he's a narcissist. 

I don't fall into either camp, but I'll reserve all final thoughts for when I close the kindle after completing volume VII: Time Regained.

I've laughed when others have said that Proust wrote this long novel so that the reader would look back "in search of lost time"-- get it? Like they lost all their time reading it (maybe you had to be there), but my emotions have been on a roller coaster.

I can say definitively after 5 volumes, this is kind of a work of genius. Also, a work of frustration. Also, it's too damn long. Also, it feels like every frigging thought in his head (and it might have been).

Okay give me a second. This post is starting to sound like the rampant ramblings of a crazy woman. I don't mean for this to be the case, but when you emerge from Proust's family apartment in Paris, it takes time to get your bearings.

I probably should let this volume digest before trying to articulate any sort of feeling about it, but I HAVE TO TELL SOMEONE. I need Proust reading friends. (Goals for 2023).

I digress again.. can I even get back on track at this point? Okay, let's try...

In this volume: The Captive- it is exactly what you think. Someone is being held captive. It's dear Albertine.

What strikes me the most about this volume is the thought of exactly how voluntary is this captivity? After Marcel asks for her hand in marriage (a totally bullshit attempt at keeping her IMHO), we see him "asking" her to move in with him. 

Let me just make bullet points at this point, because I can feel myself beginning to become enraged. This volume deals with:

• Jealousy- and lots of it
• Mansplaining- and lots of it
• Deception
• Dysfunctional ideas of love
• Manipulation- an lots of it
• Lies
• The concept of lying
• Exactly WHAT do we owe our potential partners when we first meet them of our stories
• Duplicity
• And so so much more

Have no fear, I'll end off this post with some quotes (because you have to see some of this to believe it), but Marcel basically convincing Albertine that he loves her and cares for her, but we are readers are inside of his fucked up, selfish brain and he always just seeking to manipulate her based on however he is feeling IN that moment.

His incessant need to believe that she is utterly devoted to him is egregious and honestly made me want to throw the book across the room. He is so unbelievably (but honestly it is very believable) thinking that she is in love with every single girl in her life. He imagines that she has this highly sexual sapphic past (and present) that she keeps hidden from him, and he uses these insane thoughts to justify his ill treatment of her. Barf. 1000 times barf. This friggin guy is a mess.

I can't wait to see what the last two volumes hold. Honestly, I am waiting with breath that is baited. I will give myself another 24 hours before picking up The Fugitive (yep you can infer from the title what comes next) and then go straight into Time Regained. 

I will make a long-winded Proust post when I am completely done with this book. I have so many things to say. 

Happy reading. 

Now that Albertine no longer appeared to be angry with me, the possession of her no longer seemed to me a treasure in exchange for which one is prepared to sacrifice every other.

Now that life with Albertine had become possible once again, I felt that I could derive nothing from it but misery, since she did not love me; better to part from her in the gentle solace of her acquiescence, which I would prolong in memory.

Not only did she take care never to be alone for a moment, so that I could not help but know what she had been doing if I did not believe her own statements, but even when she had to telephone to Andrée, or to the garage, or to the livery stable or elsewhere, she pretended that it was too boring to stand about by herself waiting to telephone, 

“Why do I go on seeking after a mysterious soul, interpreting a face, and feeling myself surrounded by presentiments which I dare not explore?” I asked myself. “I’ve been dreaming, the matter is quite simple. I am an indecisive young man, and it is a case of one of those marriages as to which it takes time to find out whether they will happen or not. There is nothing in this peculiar to Albertine.”

Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time, Volume 5: The Captive