Proust, Why Not to Buy His Letters to His Neighbor, and New Eastern Europe Magazine

I've been very interested in getting my hands on Letters to His Neighbor by Marcel Proust  (translated by Lydia Davis) ever since I first heard about it a few months ago. Today I spied a copy (a lone copy) on the bookshelf at Barnes & Noble. 

Next to two copies of Swann's Way. All of which were lodged between a copy of Annie Proulx's Barkskins (not pictured) and that  book entitled True whose author's name I can't make out. So that's what the 21st century has reduced Marcel Proust to in Louisville's premier bookstore.

I took the slim volume from the shelf and looked at the price. I thought it said $29.95, which meant that I would not be purchasing it. (Turns out that it was $19.95, but I am grateful for my misreading.) But I had a free night in front of me . . . so I found a nice cushioned chair and sat down and started to take a looksee.

It didn't take long to see that it would not take long to read the book in its entirety. It's 112 pages long . . . but in name only. There are a couple of blank pages at the front of the book that are counted, and a couple of pages for a completely unnecessary index in the back. And there are quite a few pages which feature pictures . . . including pictures of the actual letters which Proust wrote. And there's an introduction which runs several pages. And a translator's afterward which is unbelievably boring (several paragraphs are spent discussing the difference in how the French and the Americans number the floors of their buildings) . . . and which also quotes quite liberally from the letters themselves. Oh, and there's a diagram of the apartment that Proust lived in when he wrote the letters contained in this volume. So cut all of that out of the count and you get 37 pages of actual Proust. But even that is not quite true. There are 26 letters in this collection. Fifteen of them are one page long . . . but not all of them actually fill the page. The other eleven letters are two pages long . . . but in name only. Most of them barely make it to the second page, and usually with the help of a generous margin on the first page. I would guess that if the letters were printed with minimal breaks between them that the entire thing would only be twenty pages long. Seriously. 

But this is Proust, so that doesn't matter, right? Well . . . I can say that I did enjoy the experience of reading them. And that I did get a few new insights into Marcel Proust. For instance, he originally saw Remembrance of Things Past as being a trilogy. He also made a comment about how you couldn't understand the book until you got to the third volume, and made reference to the idea that the keys that would open the locked doors in the first two volumes were present in the final tome. That's cool shit.

But I left Barnes & Noble feeling happy that I hadn't made an impulse buy on this thing without having a hard look at it. And to make up for me reading it on the down-low, I purchased a copy of New Eastern Europe May-August No 3-4 (XXVII)/2017, and I am going to go get piggy with that shit RIGHT NOW.