A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU

OK, the title of the post might sound pretentious but it refers to that excellent, if unreadable, treatise by Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu.



Begun in 1909, when Proust was 38 years old, À la recherche du temps perdu consists of seven volumes totalling around 3,200 pages (about 4,300 in The Modern Library's translation) and featuring more than 2,000 characters. 

Well, old Marcel was a bit tedious and, as he started writing when he was 9, was also a bit precocious.

Why did I select this work as the basis for this post you might ask?

Well, Richard reminisced about his early university days in his latest post and said this about a club that he, Tony, Mike and I put together at Uni:

This extremely successful university club was started in the early 1970s, at Victoria University, by three very intelligent students and one from the St Pats G classes and fulfilled several purposes. It ran packed out social events that all the most beautiful female students rushed to attend and it kept the student newspaper Salient supplied with letters to the editor. One week alone the club wrote 60 letters. The young G class student pronounced himself king; incidentally, this was to be the only time that an affiliated club at Victoria University had a king. The whole idea for a club was inspired by a record called 20 Solid Gold Hits Of The 50s (this was to become their Holy Bible) and the society took its name from one of the songs that was sung by Marty Robbins. The four founding students made it a devotional practice to memorise the words of most of the songs on the holy record. The WSC&PCS, as some called it, was always happy to help out other clubs with their events and is officially on record for the work it did at a Music Department Club event. Unfortunately, as happens, the Music Department Club grew jealous of the WSC&PCS's success and started a cruel chain of events to have the very successful club closed down and banned from the university campus. The four founders could have contested this ruling but, as their holy bible told them, "Don't take your guns to town." As is the way, the legend of King Richard and his three brave knights of the public bar lives on and, like a prophesy from The Holy Bible, the 12th of never will become a reality this evening as the four founders meet up online for a reunion.

The old guy embellished the truth a bit in fact he decorated, adorned, exaggerated, embroidered, polished, refurbished, rebuilt, gilded, garnished, bedecked, bejewelled, festooned, bedizened, bespangled and touched up the story. Maybe his memory is failing.

"I think my name is Marcel"

It kind of reminded me of old Marcel's reminiscing only thankfully shorter.

I doubt that Richard has read À la recherche du temps perdu. In fact I doubt that anyone has actually got through it all - I certainly haven't.
It's a shame if he hasn't though as the work is described as having a musical structure with one biographer saying:

 In Search of Lost Time, like many great literary works, is a quest whose structure resembles that of a symphony. The novel's major themes—love, art, time, and memory—are carefully and brilliantly orchestrated throughout the book.