Book discussion: Swann's Way (Marcel Proust, 1913)

"For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say “I’m going to sleep.” And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book..."

In this first volume of Proust's epically long novel "In Search Of Lost Time" (sometimes called "Remembrance of Things Past"), our narrator reflects on childhood memories. Very little happens, yet the text is strangely enthralling and relatable. Notably, Proust was one of the first authors to write frankly about "inversion" (aka homosexuality) as a phenomenon in 19th-century Europe 🏳️‍🌈

NOTE: This is Book One out of seven, but feel free to continue on to the next and the next if you feel so inclined!