Within a Budding Grove

It took me much longer to finish than it should have. Why? Because I found it nowhere near as charming as Swann's Way. I would almost say I'm disappointed - especially since my expectations were high. Proust still writes beautifully, of course, but this time it felt a little bit more like a chore, a la a Henry James. (Well, okay not THAT much of a chore.) Barely a whit of humor. Perhaps I didn't like Swann's Way for its literary sophistication at all, but because it had such dynamite characters as the pun-loving Dr. Cottard, or the bullshitting Legrandin, or the bully Francoise, or the eccentric Aunt Leonie...

...but, I refuse to believe that entirely because I felt in every pore of my body the pathos of Swann's love story!

Within a Budding Grove also had a slight element of nymphet-mania - all the more disturbing because it had come before the crystallized definition thereof in Lolita, which makes the nymphet into a literary phenomenon, as opposed to a more involuntary outburst of one's unconventional lusts. If I didn't already know that Proust was gay, I might have taken his descriptions of adolescent girls seriously, and concluded that he was a creep.