It’s Proust month! For the past seven years, I have read a volume of Proust every January, which means I am now on the last volume of In Search of Lost Time, Time Regained (also translated as Finding Time Again). I invite others to join me, reading whatever volume they happen to be on, or even want to read. I like the idea of an out-of-synch reading group, a somewhat anarchic institution, without regard to any individual chronology, where everyone reads from the same book at the same time every year, but without definite knowledge of each other or even where in the tome other readers are, a kind of open secret. Secondly, the project of reading one volume a year of a künstlerroman about memory, well, lends itself to the book’s major themes. One’s own experience of reading becomes rather Proustian. I’ve vowed to continue reareading a volume every year as long as I’m able to read. And there’s something about this calendar-based structure that works so well with the book. Without having finished the seventh volume, I’m already excited to begin Swann’s Way again next January.
