It is hard sometimes to separate the author from a text; Stacey reminded us during seminar that the characters in In Search of Lost Time are not real people. But damn it, sometimes it seems like they may have been. I imagine Proust, locked away in his apartment, drugged up, creating a story – a mammoth, wordy, longest-sentence-in-the-universe kind of story – that leaves me to wonder how much is from his imagination, and how much is bits and pieces of retrieved memories; people tend to write what they know.

This last week’s reading and the unfathomable kindness that Verdurins bestowed on poor old Saniette left me riddled with questions. I scoured the readers guide, looking for hints, clues as to what these often cruel people’s motives for such an unforeseen act of kindness may have been; do they in fact have hearts of gold?

Perhaps this is a problem with not reading the entirety of the text; we don’t see the whole picture. But even after perusing the readers guide at the back of Time Regained, I found not one snippet about either character that would give the reader a back story as to their motives. Maybe Gustave Verdurin (his name is revealed on a page we did not read) was beaten as a child by a cruel governess that led him to seek a match with Sidonie, a woman with an equally terrible upbringing, whom resembled his tormentor in stature and also in temperament. I could speculate for days but this goes back to what Stacey said, they are not real people. Proust, who could spend hundreds of pages going on and on about flowers and obsession and churches and paintings and artists and that damn little band of girls really could have stepped out of his observations of what the narrator thought was happening, and informed his readers – offered a bit of history – about the other characters in his book.

Even when he chooses to share about Swann, the narrator clarifies that he has been told that they share similar characteristics. It is all about M, all the time.

As we have yet to read Time Regained, I will hope for answers. What brought about the Verdurins change of heart? Will Gilberte and Saint-Loup weather the storm of their deceitful love? Will our narrator ever find love? And who gave Swann that damn note? Tune in next week for all the developments of 19^th century France’s version of As the World Turns, just with madeleines and a whole lot more misery.