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On Reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time

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For the first fifteen years of my reading life, whenever someone asked me who my favorite novelist was, I would tell them Tolstoy, because I’d read Anna Karenina. Now I am inclined to say it is Proust. I finished In Search of Lost Time a few weeks ago, and can’t stop thinking about it. This is surprising. I read Book 1, Swann’s Way, a few years ago and although I liked it very much, I didn’t see why it was all the way up to the pinnacle of literature. I’m not the only one: after universal rejection, Proust had to pay publishers to publish his first couple of volumes; one of the publishers who rejected it said, famously: “I can’t imagine why anybody would read 50 pages about somebody falling asleep”. Undertaking Proust was an act of faith. Reading even 10 pages of Proust tires you out as much as reading 100 pages of an ordinary writer. And unfortunately, to see why it’s so great, you have to finish all 7 books. I say unfortunately because the novel is 3,000 pages long and at times tough

On Reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time Nabeel S. Qureshi Dec 18, 2025 365 49 68 Share Vermeer, View of Delft (1660) 1. Overture For the first fifteen years of my reading life, whenever someone asked me who my favorite novelist was, I would tell them Tolstoy, because I’d read Anna Karenina . Now I am inclined to say it is Proust. I finished In Search of Lost Time a few weeks ago, and can’t stop thinking about it. This is surprising. I read Book 1, Swann’s Way, a few years ago and although I liked it very much, I didn’t see why it was all the way up to the pinnacle of literature. I’m not the

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