Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of those daunting literary masterpieces that everyone wants to have read but never wants to sit down and do the reading.
It clocks in at around 4,200 pages (depending on printing and so on). It's usually broken into at least six volumes.
This monster of a novel has been on my list of things to read before I die for at least a decade, but I couldn't ever figure out how or when I was going to do it.
One day I was taking a sauna. My doctor had recommended trying it regularly after a recent health issue. I highly recommend the experience if you have access to one.
Anyway, as relaxing as they are, I do tend to get fidgety while taking them, because I just have one of those personalities. I can't sit still. I hate wasting time. Staring at a wall for 20-30 minutes is near unbearable.
That's when it occurred to me, I could read while taking a sauna. Moreover, I could read Proust!
Once the thought occurred to me, I knew I had to do it. I'd tried to read Proust many times in the past, and the thing that always stopped me was that the modern world had so many distractions: TV, movies, games, phones, online articles, and so on.
I can't bring electronics into a sauna, so it was a perfect distraction-free zone. Even better was the fact that my saunas are around 20 minutes. Proust is best digested in short time periods. If you read too much, you'll get overwhelmed and you'll start to miss contemplating many of the deep points buried in the text.
So here it is. My series on reading Proust in the sauna. I'll pull out the parts that got me thinking and then elaborate on those thoughts here. Proust makes for some great freewriting prompts.
Hopefully, we'll all learn something along the way! Stay tuned for more.
And don't worry about "spoilers." This novel isn't the type that can be spoiled. I'll mostly be reacting to individual sentences I find interesting.