What I found was a novel so preoccupied with the minutiae of experience that I had no choice but to reappraise my own. His novel cycle, In Search of Lost Time, also presents the attractive challenge of surmounting a massive text-multiple volumes, stretching between 3,000 and 4,000 pages, depending on the edition-and the subsequent entry into a rare and rather pretentious club of readers. Proust’s work has many qualities that might recommend it for pandemic reading: the author’s concern with the protean nature of time, the transportive exploration of memory and the past, or simply the pleasure of immersing oneself in the richly detailed life of another. My friend’s response shortly thereafter confirmed this: “It’s too early for me to follow this sentence.” Next to me, my 2-year-old daughter slowly guided a spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth, noticing my struggle. It was a photo of a page from Swann’s Way, and it took several attempts for me to capture the near-page-length sentence in its entirety. One morning a few weeks ago, I sent my friend a Proust text.
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