Beckett's essay is pompous, intentionally obfuscating, and fails to illuminate much of anything about Proust's great work. I almost put the piece down after encountering the meaningless phrase "...leaves us as indifferent as the heterogeneity of any one of its terms..." The words in this essay seem to be placed there for the sound they make, not for any meaning they might convey. If only this were a parody of literary criticism, then I could have enjoyed it immensely. I decided to read the entire piece just to have it under my belt, but actually wish I hadn't since it was ultimately so annoying, down to the very last page. The penultimate page, in fact, has the most meaningless, ill-informed, soulless description of music I've ever read. My note to myself after getting through this portion was that clearly Beckett had never actually experienced music and certainly had never listened to a Mozart opera, since if he had, he would never have been able to write that passage. ( )

Video review forthcoming along with Céleste Albaret's [b:Monsieur Proust|379255|Monsieur Proust|Céleste Albaret|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320487419l/379255._SY75_.jpg|369072] and Józef Czapski's [b:Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp|40378238|Lost Time Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp|Józef Czapski|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1551194775l/40378238._SY75_.jpg|23896057]. ( )

this gotta be the funniest literary criticism i've read. at first you may think beckett has snatched up proust as a soapbox for his own artistic credo, but you'll soon find that he has none, even less so than he intends to elucidate proust. this is pure delightful bombast: this is how a literary debutant makes a splash in 1930. his extensive summaries of the plot of ISOLT could not possibly be for the aid of someone who has not read it already, because they are cheeky and convoluted. there are too many preposterous turns of phrase for me to quote -- i see this as an entertainment for those who are as intimately familiar with proust's world as beckett is, to see him so deftly juggling, jumbling, balancing and blasting the material . (and yes, occasionally circling towards a legitimately profound interpretation...) ( )

Beckett's wonderfully snotty essay on habit and the "suffering of being" in Proust has this wonderful line: "Habit is the chain that ties the dog to its vomit" ( )

Not the first time I tried to read this book, but I this time I had more patience & familiarity with Beckett which helped me get a lot out of it. Beckett described it as full of "pretentious pseudo-philiosphical jargon", and whilst I see what he meant it is a profound meditation on memory, habit and art, as he reads Proust through his highly idiosyncratic lense. A book to think about for years yet. Although I'd never heard of the 3 artists he discusses in the conversations, they also treat well trodden themes of the exhausted subject of art and the inability to express - and are in places extremely funny. ( )