The **mission** of this group is to closely read Marcel Proust's masterpiece: *In Search of Lost Time* [ISOLT, nee *Remembrance of Things Past]* and discuss our reading together via Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic. Once back in-person, we'll meet over coffee/tea and pastry in Westwood Village (Los Angeles). We currently offer a separate group reading the text in the original language.

In the hiatus before our sixth journey through ISOLT in English, consider these opportunities for growth through discussion of great literature via Zoom:
• Proust's *À la recherche du temps perdu:* [https://www.meetup.com/proust/](https://www.meetup.com/pro...)
• Classics from the Western Canon: [https://www.meetup.com/LetsReadClassics/](https://www.meet...)
• Classics in Philosophy: [https://www.meetup.com/History-of-Ideas/](https://www.meet...)

We take 15-18 months to read the seven novels comprising ISOLT only reading as much as we can thoughtfully discuss during our two-hour, bi-weekly Meetups. We may have guest Proustian scholars attend our meetings. In June 2020, we completed our fifth cycle through *In Search of Lost Time.*

Our sixth cycle began in September 2022 -the centennial of the publication of *Swann's Way* in English. We handed off to a larger online group reading all of Proust in 2022-23. We started our second cycle reading ISOLT in French in spring 2023. Our next English foray using the Carter Yale Annotated edition of ISOLT is pending assembling a group wanting to meetup in-person in Los Angeles as part of a hybrid seventh cycle through Proust.

**HISTORY**

A sub-set of veteran Proust readers branched off in 2013 to read other challenging texts: Joyce's *Ulysses,* Faulkner's *The Sound and the Fury;* Mann's *The Magic Mountain* and Tolstoy's *War and Peace* in 2014; and Pynchon's *Gravity's Rainbow*, Woolf's *To the Lighthouse,* Sterne's *Tristam Shandy,* Eliot's *Middlemarch,* Dante's *Inferno Don Quixote*, Homer's *Odyssey* and, again, Joyce's *Ulysses* in 2015-16. In 2016 we added a third sub-group meeting at noon Sundays and have read Virgil's *Aeneid,* Ovid's *Metamorphoses,* Milton's *Paradise Lost,* Melville's *Moby-Dick* and Becket's Novel Trilogy.  In 2019, we consolidated all non-Proust groups into a separate Meetup called "Let's Read! -Classics from the Western Canon [[https://www.meetup.com/LetsReadClassics/](https://www.meet...)] Join both to sail the canon while soaring with Proust.
Join any or all sub-groups for the single annual membership fee!

Here is a Complete List of our group's literary explorations 2011-22 [Attendees]:
• Proust Cycle I: July 2011 [6] to February 2013 [8]
• Proust Cycle II: February 2013 [8] to May 2014 [7]
• Joyce, *Ulysses*: March 2013 [5] to August 2013 [2]
• Faulkner, *The Sound and The Fury*: September 2013 [4] to October 2013 [3]
• Faulkner, *A Light in August*: November 2013 [4] to December 2013 [4]
• Mann, *The Magic Mountain*: January 2014 [7] to May 2014 [3]
• Tolstoy, *War and Peace*: June 2014 [6] to November 2014 [5]
• Flaubert, *A Sentimental Education*: June 2014 [7] to August 2014 [7]
• Carter, *Marcel Proust*: *A Life:* June 2014 [7] to December 2014 [5]
• Proust Cycle III: June 2014 [8] to November 2014 [1] (suspended following Vol. 3)
• Proust, *Pleasure and Days:* August 2014 [6] to September 2014 [5]
• Proust, *Contre Sainte-Beuve:* October 2014 [4] to November 2014 [6]
• Proust, *Jean Santeuil:* December 2014 [6] to April 2015 []
• Pynchon, *Gravity's Rainbow*: December 2014 [11] to April 2015 [6]
• Albaret, *Monsieur Proust*: January 2015 [6] to March 2015 [4]
• Watt, *Marcel Proust:* March 2015 [4] to April 2015 []
• Aciman, *The Proust Project:* April 2015 [] to May 2015 [] 
• Woolf, *To the Lighthouse:* May 2015 [6] to May 2015 [6]  
• Proust Cycle IV: September 2015 [24] to May 2017 [12] 
• Kristeva, *Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature* : April 2015 to June 2015
*•* Sterne, *Tristram Shandy:* June 2015 [6] to August 2015 [4]
• Eliot, *Middlemarch:* June 2015 [9] to Sept 2015 [7]
• Dante, *Inferno:* October 2015 [11] to November 2015 [12]
• Cervantes, *Don Quixote:* December 2015 [8] to March 2016 [4]
• Homer, *The Odyssey:* April 2016 [12] to May 2016 [7]
• Vergil, *The Aeneid:* May 2016 [3] to June 2016 [2]
• Joyce, *Ulysses*: June 2016 [10] to December 2016 [10]
• Beckett, *Malone/Malloy Dies/The Unnameable:* July 2016 [4] to October 2016 [5] 
• Munger, *Scenes de la vie Boheme:* October 2016 [5] (Suspended after second session)
• Milton, *Paradise Lost:* October 2016 [4] to January 2017 [3]
• Melville, *Moby-Dick or The Whale:* January 2017 [3] to April 2017 [5]
• Nabokov, *Pale Fire:* January 2017 [15] to February 2017 [9]
• Borges, *Collected Fictions*: March 2017 [7] to June 2017 [4]
• Ovid, *Metamorphoses:* April 2017 [6] to  June 2017 [4]
• Flaubert, *Madame Bovary:* June 2017 [9] to July 2017 [9]
• Joyce, *Finnegan's Wake:* June 2017 [6] to  June 2019 [3]
• Chaucer, *The Canterbury Tales:* July 2017 [2] to August 2017 [3]
• Gogol, *Dead Souls*: July 2017 [7] to September 2017 [4]
• Tolstoy, *Anna Karenina:* August 2017 [8] to November 2017 [5]
• Turgenev, *Fathers and Children:* October 2017 [7] to November 2017 [6]
• Proust Cycle V: October 2017 [12] to June 2020 [7] 
**• Proust in French: October 2017 [12] to January 2023 [6]** 
• Balzac, *Cousin Bette:* November 2017 [6] to January 2018 [6]
• Woolf, *To the Lighthouse:* December 2017 [8] to  December 2017 [6]
• James, *The Portrait of a Lady:* January 2018 [7] to March 2018 [6]
• Balzac, *Les Chouans:* February 2018 [6] to March 2018 [3]
• Balzac, *Père Goriot:* April 2018 [6] to April 2018 [5] 
• Barthes, *S/Z:* May 2018 [5] to June 2018 [4]  
• Conrad, The Secret Agent: April 2018 [7] -April 2018 [6]
• Mann, *Buddenbrooks*: May 2018 [4] - Sept 2018 [5]
• Stendhal, *The Red and The Black*: June [6]-July 2018 [5]
• Stendhal, *The Charterhouse of Parma*: Aug 2018 [7] -Sept 2018 [3]
• Barnes, Nightwood: Sept 2018 [7] to Sept 2018 [7]
• Conrad, Nostromo: Sept 2018 [8] to  Dec 2018 [5]
• Marlowe, *Doctor Faustus*: Oct 2018 [4] to Nov 2018 [4]
• Goethe, *Faust:* Nov 2018 [5] to Dec 2018 [3]
• Bulgakov, *The Master and Margarita:* Dec 2018 [6] to Feb 2019 [8]
• Faulkner, *As I Lay Dying*: Feb 2019 [9] to Mar 2019 [5]
• Dostoyevsky, *The Idiot:* April 2019 [10] to July 2019 [9]
• Melville, *Moby-Dick or The Whale:* July 2019 [9] to Dec 2019 [8]
• December 2019: New group with name changed to *Let's Read! Classics from the Western Canon*
**• Proust in French Cycle II: April 2023 [6] to ? []**

*Previous Proust Cycles:* 
Cycle I: 2011-2018  -Shifted to western classics
Cycle II: 2013-2019  -Shifted to western classics
Cycle III: 2014 [through *Guermantes Way*] -Shifted to Cycle IV, Then western classics
Cycle IV: 2015-2017 -Shifted to philosophy classics [[www.meetup.com/History-of-Ideas](https://www.meetup.com/History-of-Ideas/)/]
Cycle V: 2017-2020 -Restarted ISOLT forming a separate group
Cycle VI: 2022 -[Swann's Way only] 100th Anniversary of *Swann's Way* in English
Cycle VII: 202x -Pending