And the winner is…Proust, by a nose!
Yes, The Literate Kitten will cuddle up with Marcel in 2005, starting with volume one of his seven-volume tome, In Search of Lost Time: “Swann’s Way.”
We are already intrigued by the first sentence: “For a long time, I went to bed early.”
As to which translation we chose, well, it was a tough call. We considered the C.K. Scott Montcrieff version, which was first translated in the 1920s, or D.M. Enright’s 1993 version. But, being ever adventurous, we opted for the most recent translation by Lydia Davis. We’ll wing the remaining six volumes.
Other adulators of Marcel abound, as indicated by this short list of Proust-related books, which the LitKit hopes to explore along the way:
Alain de Botton, “How Proust Can Change Your Life”
Andre Aciman, “The Proust Project”
Roger Shattuck, “A Field Guide to In Search of Lost Time”
Richard Bales (ed.), “The Cambridge Companion to Proust”
