Reading The Dream of the Red Chamber triggered a severe urge in me to read Proust's magnum opus. Odd, but it's just the way my mind works. Fortunately the Kilmartin 3 volume revision of Moncrieff's translation of Remembrance of Things Past resides on the bookshelves at Maison KL so I'm presently unable to fulfil the urge, which will most likely pass. Why 'fortunately'? Well, rereading the three would constitute a major project, best pursued when I'm fully retired. (And I'm likely to fancy a more recent translation at that highly hypothetical point.)
So as a kind of happy substitute for losing myself in Proust's inimitable long sentences, I'm now embarked on a full reading of the handsome LOA edition of Frederick Douglass's Autobiographies. The sentences may not be quite as lengthy but, my goodness, they have gravity (and grace.) I loved teaching the first Narrative of the Life back in 2022, the most succinct and punchy of the three but now's the time to sprawl into the longer, more leisurely retellings of one of the great lives.
And one of the toughest. The rendering of the reality of a slave's life in 19C America has lost none of its disturbing power for this reader.
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