The general editor Christopher Prendergast's preface starts off by quoting a New Yorker cartoon featuring a "peevish shopper saying to a salesman in a bookstore 'I want something to get even with him for that new translation of Proust he got me last year.'" Later on, he also states alarmingly: "There seems to be no good reason to make Proust reader friendly …" When I started out on my Penguin edition, I even wondered how many people made it as far as the opening chapter. the three fat volumes of the penguin Moncrieff translation have come with me on several camping holidays, and once I did start and reached page 157, loved it but didn't keep going when I came home …" "Like others I have had this in my reading pile for the last few years, since I retired. It is now doing a good job of supporting my clock radio at the correct height." "I started reading it once (the Moncrieff) but it took me so long to read the first chapter that I gave up. Looking forward to getting through it all now that the Club is onto it." Even those who find his writing lovely struggle to progress, as Reading Group contributor AndrewLesk puts it: But it does explain why so many readers feel themselves going under so quickly. Of course, describing Proust in terms of plot alone does no justice to the reflections, counter-reflections, digressions and musings that form so much of the immersive pleasure he offers.
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