Next month sees the 100th anniversary of the publication of "Swann's Way," the first volume of Marcel Proust's masterpiece "Remembrance of Things Past" (or, if you prefer D.J. Enright's translation, "In Search of Lost Time"). So stand by for what one expert calls a Proustathon.
"Untold universities have planned at least one reading or roundtable dedicated to Proust. Every self-respecting bookstore will hold its own Proustathon, with authors, actors and book lovers reading snippets from his epic novel. The Center for Fiction in New York has scheduled a Proust evening, and the French Embassy is organizing its own Proust occasion. There are Proust T-shirts, Proust coffee mugs, Proust watches, Proust comic series, Proust tote bags, Proust fountain pens and Proust paraphernalia of all stripes."
As it happens, I'm reading "Swann's Way" on a Kindle — which is more appropriate than you might think. The novel was effectively self-published by Proust himself (he paid a publisher to put it out) because the manuscript had been turned down by umpteen respectable publishing houses. If he had written it today, he could have published it himself, at no expense, as a Kindle book, just like E.L. James, the author of "Fifty Shades of Grey," did in more recent times.
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