Proust & miscellany.

In which a rescue mission from the post office is accomplished.

For a long time I went to bed early I’ve wanted the twelve volume set of Proust that Chatto and Windus put out in (I think?) the fifties and sixties. This seemed to me to be an ideal way of reading such a large book, rather than dragging around various larger editions. You could fit these in your pocket, depending on the size of the pocket.

In college we translated the first few pages of Swann’s Way, enough for me to know I wanted to read the rest, but I’ve never had much luck getting through the Lydia Davis translation in the new Penguin series. Furthermore I didn’t really like the conceit of having a different translator for every volume, if we’re being honest. So I didn’t much mind that this set was an older translation, either—though of course you can get the Moncrieff translation much more easily in other editions.

It’s probably true that there’s such a …