{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1734",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1734,
    "subject": "Wolfe on Proust",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-08-05T19:11:56+00:00",
    "last": "1999-08-05T19:11:56+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0038@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-08-05T19:11:56+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Wolfe on Proust",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "(the Proust bits from an unpublished interview conducted by myself a few\nyears ago--the manuscript of EXODUS had just been turned in.)\n\n\nQ: How many times have you read _Remembrance of Things Past_ and what is\nyour favorite part?\n\nGW: To the best of my memory, I've read _The Remembrance of Things Past_\ntwo and a half times. I read the old translation through twice, began the\nnew one (by Terrence Kilmartin, but quite similar to Scott Moncrieff's) and\ngot about half through before I had to vet the galleys of something. Proust\nis a problem for me because when I read him I don't want to read anything\nelse, and of course it's seven books.\n\n     I've been looking through Volume I of the Kilmartin; I finished it in\n1985. My favorite part, which I've been unable to find, is the young Marcel\ngoing to mass in Combray, looking at the tombs in the church, the stained\nglass windows, and so on.\n\n     There is also that wonderful scene in the Bois in which he waits and\nwaits for his grandmother to leave the public toilet. After a wait that\nseems almost infinite, she leaves, walking fast--very fast, for an old\nlady--and he hurries to catch up with her. That scene is more horrible than\nninety-nine one hundredths of the avowed horror I've read.\n\nQ: The first scene you mentioned (mass in Combray) begins on page 190 of\nKilmartin Volume I, the second (grandmother's stroke) begins on 319 of\nVolume II. Interesting pair--the glory of the sublime and the horror of the\nmundane. The quiet horror of grandmother's stroke, where everyday\nbanalities mask and hide a real crisis, where offhand remarks carry uncanny\nportent--this comes up again in that unforgettable scene where the dying\nSwann tries to introduce his daughter to the society that has shunned him\n(for marrying her mother, among other reasons).\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}