Currently meandering through The Brother Karamazov (completely absorbing but a new experience in surrendering to the flow of the read), and beginning the fourth volume of the Proust master work In Search of Lost Time. Sodom and Gomorrah, from what I can tell to this point, is what it's title obviously suggests. While the recurrent themes of social climbing, the descent of the aristocracy in Belle Epoque France, the Dreyfus affair and others are all still apparent, Proust has turned to sex in volume four where we see how difficult Proust's own position in a society not kind to either Jews or homosexuals (or "inverts" as Marcel would have said) must have been.
Patrick Alexander, in his excellent guide to the remembrance of things past, draws attention to the "loneliness and anguish" of Proust at a time when being a gay man was not just taboo but could land one in prison. Think Oscar Wilde here. From the longest sentence in a work full of long sentences:
"Their honor precarious, their liberty provisional, lasting only until the discovery of their crime; their position unstable, like that of the poet one day feted in every drawing room and applauded in every theatre in London, and the next driven from every lodging, unable to find a pillow upon which to lay his head, turning the mill like Samson and saying like him: "The two sexes shall die, each in a place apart!"; excluded even, save on the days of general misfortune when the majority rally round the victim as the Jews rallied around Dreyfus, from the sympathy - at times from the society - of their fellows, in whom they inspire only disgust at seeing themselves as they are, portrayed in a mirror which, ceasing to flatter them, accentuates ever blemish that they have refused to observe in themselves ..."
On April 23, three weeks from today, several us will discuss Sodom and Gomorrah here and on the blogs of other participants in the conversation. The Baron de Charlus is on the prowl for young "renters," the Princesse of Guermantes is throwing parties, and Marcel's hyperactive imagination has turned to lesbians or at least potential romantic interests also willing to sleep with women. Love in the spring time. Care to join us? Read in the past or squeezing it in just in time or anything in between, please come join the conversation.