Remembrance of Things Past - Abridged: The 'Less is More' edition of Proust's great work

Remembrance of Things Past - Abridged: The 'Less is More' edition of Proust's great work

Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past' or (depending on the translation) ' The Search for Lost Time' is probably the greatest work of literature. It's a philosophical exploration of the relationship we are each navigating with ourselves as we move through time and relationships with others. Marcel Proust was one of the world's premier stylists - his writing and descriptions are so beautiful that readers of Proust find the world around them forever more joyous and less isolating. And yet it's almost never read now simply because it's too long. The full length version was self published without an editor and forms 6 or 7 volumes and thousands of pages. It's so long that people attempting new translations of it haven't lived long enough to complete them. Large sections of the original work seem pointless and discouraging to many readers, and make the book difficult to follow. In a concentrated form the work retains much of its genius and reveals previously hidden elegance. While the plot of the book is, in any edition, secondary to the development of the author's philosophy, the journey of the narrator from childhood through his development as an adult artist is much easier to follow in a book this size. Remembrance of Things Past was originally translated into English by C K Scott Moncrieff, and updates have been made from time to time. This abridged version can be read instead of the full version or as preparation for it, as awareness of the arc of events does not spoil, but rather enhances, a reading of the original.