In the aftermath of my counterfeit revelation/panic attack last week, I've stopped reading Kierkegaard for now. I was reading both The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard and The Concept of Anxiety, but it turns out that I haven't the strength of character to confront such harsh and unsentimental truths. (Except that Kierkegaard was a Christian philosopher, so his thinking must have been not truthful, but invalid, absurd, false, or delusional--I get so confused.) Recognizing the threat to my fragile psyche, my therapist suggested no more Kierkegaard before bed. So since then, I've sought refuge in Proust's comforting, uncomplicated search for the time that we all, as mere mortals, are forever losing.

Our reading group read In Search of Lost Time over the course of 2002. In October of that year, a new translation was published in England (the first volume of which is now available in he States), so I switched translations in the fifth volume. I was pleased with the change, and regretted not having the new translation available from the start. Given that, and given how much there is to be found in the more than 3,000 pages of the novel and how little of that I actually found during my first journey, I knew that I would return, but I didn't expect to do so so soon.

When my therapist suggested that I take my reading a little easier, I was faced with the pleasing dilemma of choosing something from my vast piles of books. (Often, while brushing my teeth before bed, I'll stand in front of my shelves, running my free hand over the spines of all the wonderful books awaiting my attention, and get giddy.) I thought that I should undertake something overwhelming and absorbing, something filled with great writing, something that would draw me effortlessly in. I quickly narrowed my choices down to Proust and the new translation of Don Quixote. I decided on Proust because his writing forces a sort of meditative stillness on me and because it opens with the highly strung narrator's struggles to sleep, which seemed apropos.

Because I've read In Search of Lost Time before, its structure is much clearer to me now. In fact, I would say that my first reading served only to introduce the novel's themes, characters, and structure, and that it's only with all of that in mind that I'm able to begin reading it properly. I'm also inclined to say that this new translation is easing my progress, but it's hard to tell. Whatever the reason (a sense of the novel's topography, a clearer translation, or a hard-earned comfort with Proust's sentences), I'm enjoying my re-reading immensely. If you've ever eyed this vast novel, but haven't yet embarked on the lifetime of reading that it demands, I encourage you in the strongest terms to get started. There's very little that I've read that so richly rewards the effort.