Proust is one of those writers some people crack wise about, but more often they tease others who make assertions like, "people don't have the attention span for stuff like that anymore." And they are right: most people don't. But if the capacity to stay focused on one thing is desirable, and it probably is, then—can we fairly say that the attention is worth it, for something so massive as La Recherche?

I avoided reading it in English because I had, before coming to France, the fanciful idea that I would one day read it in French. That seemed like a forbidding task, but now that I have the time and the capacity, I am determined to undertake it. Perhaps people can benefit from the knowledge that reading this reputedly difficult book in my second language is not only a possibility but now something I am actually doing.

The cadence of posts on this site will be roughly weekly. This gives me enough time to read, collect my thoughts, find some appropriate research material, and jot down some hopefully interesting notes about what I've discovered. As the inaugural post/introduction suggests, not to speak of the tongue-in-cheek title, the tone and content will have a philosophical bent.

As I have lately dropped out of grad school, but still want some extracurricular means to explore and think about philosophy, I figured one of the ür-texts of high modernism would give me the opportunity to do that and still indulge in my primary interest, snobby literature.