Breakfast at the Bookstore #25

Daily Dose

From Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C. K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy, and Translator, by Jean Findlay

EARLY PROUST

"Prentice first wanted to know if he would consider translating Proust's early works but Charles was not keen, calling Proust's Pastiches et Melanges 'a series of parodies of French stylists which it would be utterly impossible to render even into Belgian.'"

From Chapter 13, Writer ans Spy in Fascist Italy

Breakfast at the Bookstore with Brad and Nick #24

Daily Dose

From Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin

I'D RATHER

"'I'd rather have it in my bed than a slap with a wet fish,' the words came tumbling from Cottard, who had for some time been waiting in vain for Forchewille to pause for breath so that he might get in this hoary old joke for which there might not be another cue if the conversation should take a different turn and which he now produced with that excessive spontaneity and confidence that seeks to cover up the coldness and the anxiety inseparable from a prepared recitation."

From page 286, this edition.

Daily Dose

From Within a Budding Grove, by Marcel Proust, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin

HIS TRAGEDY

"'His tragedy was the deplorable age in which he lived.'"

Robert Saint-Loup, speaking of his father, from Place-Names: The Place

Daily Dose

From Within a Budding Grove, by Marcel Proust, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff

CRUISING

"I turned my head and saw a man of about forty, very tall and rather stout, with a very dark moustache, who, nervously slapping the leg of his trousers with a switch, kept fastened upon me a pair of eyes dilated with observation."

From Part II, Place-Names: The Place