Reading Groups

Advanced Proust III: The Guermantes Way with Lila Azam Zanganeh

10 Sessions Tuesdays, 5:00 pm EDT - 6:30 pm EDT September 10, 2024 to June 24, 2025

Online via Zoom

The ‘With Book’ option includes the title required for this group at a 10% discount from our Bookstore.

Meeting Dates:
9/10, 10/22, 11/19, 12/17, 1/21, 2/18, 3/25, 4/22, 5/20, 6/24
Held Online via Zoom

“An open book is time regained,” wrote Bernard de Fallois, a legendary French editor and Proustian who, upon dying in 2018, released a trove of previously unpublished Proust stories and caused an earthquake in the field. Marcel Proust, beginning with Swann’s Way (the first of his seven volumes), and continuing with Within a Budding Grove and The Guermantes Way—the books at hand this coming September—points the way to the sensual and mysterious nature of time. Time is evanescent, and yet may, at any moment, loop back around itself. The Guermantes Way goes on weaving the cycle of time, enriching it with the myriad chords and colors of desire (for a peevish Duchess, a shimmering salon, or simply a name.) Desire, Proust tells us, is the prime mover of the imagination and its secret golden lining. An inquiry into both the quicksands of social life and the treacherous nature of longing, The Guermantes Way tells us how, against all odds, time is a gift if we know to become its lover. These next ten sessions will focus primarily on The Guermantes Way—while the first two sessions will recap Within a Budding Grove (Volume II) with a focus on its last 200 pages, we’ll then move on to The Guermantes Way (Volume III).

Participants will actively discuss the second volume over the course of 10 sessions within a single year. Roughly fifty pages will be discussed per live session, paying particular attention to narrative texture, intent, and tenor.

The class, in its beginnings and entirety, will allow participants to fully experience the essence of the Proustian: from the sensorial, and quietly cataclysmic, experience of the madeleine to the epiphany of the loose paving stone and the great, final ball of the Guermantes. We will also delve into each extraordinary character (biographical or not): the narrator himself, Swann, Odette, Saint-Loup, Madame Verdurin, and many others whose affect and vision deeply influenced our perception of modern sensibility. We will examine the acumen with which Proust describes the fracturing of the French social structure in response to the Dreyfus Affair, as well as his groundbreaking exploration of the versatile, at times perverse, nature of love.

Participants are encouraged to use Moncrieff’s translation for ease and consistency within the group.

What to expect from this reading group: Participants will actively discuss the second volume, paying particular attention to narrative texture, intent, and tenor.

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Participants should read or review the last two-hundred pages of Within a Budding Grove (Volume II) ahead of the first class. Thereafter, roughly fifty pages of The Guermantes Way (Volume III) will be discussed per session, and the reading group leader will be in touch with the group ahead of each session to indicate which particular passages the session will focus on.

Capacity: 20

Please note: All virtual classes are recorded. Please click here for information about our recording policy.

Led by

Lila Azam Zanganeh

Lila Azam Zanganeh

Lila Azam Zanganeh was born in Paris to Iranian parents. After studying literature and philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, she moved to the United States to teach literature and cinema at Harvard University. She has contributed criticism, interviews and essays to a host of publications including the New York Times, the New Yorker, Le Monde, La Repubblica, and the Paris Review. Her first book, The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness, was the recipient of the 2011 Roger Shattuck Prize and was published worldwide in thirteen languages. Lila serves as a Director on the Board of Trustees for the Vladimir Nabokov Literary Foundation and as a member of the Advisory Board of Libraries Without Border. She has also served as a judge for the Man Booker Prize and the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. Her forthcoming novel, Exit Paradise, will be published in 2025.

About this series

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