I really don’t feel any special way in reaction to reading the Proust excerpts. Some of the bits and pieces reminded me of things we’ve discussed or things I’ve thought about in relation to this class, but the writing style itself was not especially challenging. I noticed a significant amount of description which may be considered dense, and the plot doesn’t move very quickly at all. The narrative is in a very self-centered, reflective first-person form.
I suppose the piece to which I connected most personally was when the narrator was describing his (I assume) childhood church, specifically the thought, “…all this made of the church for me something entirely different from the rest of the town: an edifice occupying, so to speak, a four-dimensional space — the name of the fourth being Time — extending through the centuries its ancient nave, which, bay after bay, chapel after chapel. seemed to stretch across and conquer not merely a few yards of soil, but each successive epoch…” (I just realized that that entire paragraph is approximately two sentences… Perhaps I’m too comfortable with stream-of-consciousness writing.) This idea reminded me of walking into the First Presbyterian Church in Richmond and feeling very at home, as if it were the same sanctuary of the University Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill. Both churches are very old (FPC-R is celebrating its bicentennial year) and are in a way connected. I think that connection between all houses of worship is very interesting and is what Proust (or the narrator, rather) is addressing here.