He never tells you the age of the hero
January 8, 2019 6:37 PM   Subscribe

 
Proust is a writer whose very mention, much like David Foster Wallace, makes me irrationally annoyed ("oh you just must read it in the original French"), so it's somehow heartening that he's a pain in the ass to editors too.
posted by runcibleshaw at 6:50 PM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]


Wow, the French Shakespeare. Textual editors of both language traditions are lucky that such good writers left behind such confusing texts.
posted by sy at 6:51 PM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


I think Proust would have liked using a word processor.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:01 PM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


The challenge of editing The Prisoner is that it's the worst of the volumes and a truly discreet editor would have reduced it to about fifty pages.
posted by praemunire at 7:51 PM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


"Proust in his first book, wrote about, wrote about..."
posted by Windopaene at 10:47 PM on January 8, 2019 [7 favorites]


To be fair, the author dying before publication often makes editing difficult.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:17 PM on January 9, 2019


I get the impression that all of these funny inconsistencies are features rather than bugs, reflecting his mercurial shifting impressions. (I'm not a big fan of Proust, but I might give him another try in the future.)
posted by ovvl at 3:26 PM on January 9, 2019


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