Im sure you can tell from the title that much like the other people in this course, I did not enjoy the writing style of this book. But before I jump into ranting about it, I’ll talk about some more interesting aspects of the book first.
The flow and focus of this books features a sort of choppy consciousness – like you’re reaching back into the depths of your memory and just recalling whatever you can that relates to one another, which often times don’t necessarily connect that well. I think that really contributes to the confusion of this book because there seems to be holes in between the sentences, contexts, and stories. So as a reader on my end, I’m trying to scour the pages to try to piece things together and read on the sentences to see if things will come together, yet it doesn’t. But that seems to be intentional in some ways maybe?. Also, it features windows as a symbol- reading this book did feel like I was glancing into the window of someones house and it reminds me of the reality that this is someone else’s story being retold for their own purposes, so the world and the bounds of it are dictated by them only, not necessarily meant for others to easily understand. Which also connects to my next point.
A lot of the times, I feel that reading is sort of like an interaction between writer and reader, somewhat like a dance (it takes two to tango etc. etc. etc.) like maybe a children’s book will be more direct and guiding along so on the authors part they design their writing to be more rooted in the audiences perspective. Somewhat like you’re being taught to dance and held by the hand to see the world through the authors eyes and stories. For this book, it felt like instead of the usual duet, it’s instead the author’s solo performance and I’m just there to watch. I think that process is unusual and does challenge our activeness and perspectives on what it means to be a reader.
And that then leads me to my next point and I guess my dissatisfaction with the book. When reading a book I think I seek to empathize. I want to see the perspective of a character that isn’t me, know what’s going on about them or what they think about things. I also held this expectation for this book, but for some reason this book just didn’t really connect with me. It could be that I just don’t care about the ramblings of a little rich boy but I think it’s more than that- I can’t discern the relevancy (in the sense of the purpose of what he means to convey) from his sentences and that could just be a fault of mine.
To end with a question, why do you think people write, or what is the purpose of writing a novel/book? What do you think Proust’s view was?