My first attempt at reading Marcel Proust’s “Combray” was difficult, to say the least. I started off with the scanned pages posted to the course website, but between Proust’s long-winded sentences and my eyes feeling strained from staring at my laptop screen, I wasn’t able to immerse myself in the reading. Luckily, I was able to get my hands on a physical copy of the book from my local library, and the difference in reading the words from a tangible source proved to be beneficial in my understanding of Proust. Now, with a book in my hands, I was able to better appreciate Proust’s unique writing style and ability to craft elaborate descriptions.

Passed the initial hiccups of getting used to the structure of the text, I surprisingly found that many of the themes in the novel are fairly relatable. From the accompanying lecture, it was noted that Proust had published the novel between 1913 and 1927, but despite there being over a hundred years from its initial distribution date, the overarching idea of the importance of memory and the emotions that it brings is still very relevant to this day.
In particular, Proust’s ability to capture how actions can trigger memories and transport individuals to a different time and mentality is most clear in the scene where the narrator dips a madeleine into a cup of tea. The description of how the simple taste of the madeleine transcends its satiety purpose and is able to bring back memories of the narrator’s memory of Combray beautifully illustrates how memories can easily memories can be evoked.

Overall, although the narrative structures made following the plot a bit challenging, Proust’s stylistic choices in language and structure excelled in capturing the emotions of reminiscing the past. However, I found that my experience reading “Combray” is similar to the process of being transported back to an old memory. Instead of lingering on every word that he writes, in the end, I found myself focusing on the general feelings that Proust is trying to describe. Unfortunately, that also lead me to feel detached from the plot and I couldn’t find the inclination to continue reading beyond the minimum requirements.

Hence, the reading also leaves me with this question for the class: How did you approach this reading? Did you focus on the words themselves or how the words flow together instead? Were you able to finish the whole novel or did you stop at the minimum requirement?