Three volumes of Proust on a bookshelf.

Back in 1996 I read Proust’s A la recherche du temps passé ( translated as Remembrance of Things Past and In Search of Lost Time) and I did it in only 10 weeks. I understand that this might be a world record, and although it’s not one that I’m proud of, it was certainly a unique experience speed-running Proust.

Here’s how it happened.

In 1996 I was the pianist for Heather Pawsey when she won the Eckhardt-Grammate Competition in Brandon, Manitoba. As part of the prize, Heather was asked to give a 15-city tour across Canada and she asked me to be her pianist for the tour, which hit spots all over Canada including Sackville, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Brandon, Saskatoon, and all the way west to Vancouver.

This was back in the golden age of touring, when we only had one concert every 48 hours on average. 1996 was a time before the days of readily available internet, so although I had an email address, I rarely used it.

Heather and I had a lot of time on our hands on this concert tour.

Planning ahead, bought all three volumes of the Penguin edition of Proust (translated by Moncrieff and Kilmartin) two weeks before the start of the tour and started Swann’s Way.

Once the tour started, there was a lot of downtime, whether in airports, on flights or buses, at concert venues, and especially holed up in hotels or B&Bs, frequently with frigid weather outside.

Over the course of these six weeks, I read much of Proust, just starting Time Regained as the tour ended. A few weeks later I finished the rest of the final book, much of it read on my SkyTrain commute every day from New West to downtown Vancouver.

As my reading practice deepened over the following years, I was glad that I had made it all the way through this beast of a novel, but disappointed that I had speedrun it rather than taking the time to enjoy the details.

Which is why I’m once again making a second run through Proust’s mega-novel. This time I’ll be taking it slow, reading only 2-4 pages per sitting and enjoying the endless flow of Proust’s narrative.

If I’m consistent, I estimate that this will take me between 3 to 5 years, perhaps longer. It’s feels like traveling on a sub-light spaceship to another solar system where the trip is planned in years and decades rather than days or weeks.

But this time around I aim to savour the small moments, page by page. 📚