{"id":712,"date":"2026-06-01T06:38:40","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T06:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/2026\/06\/01\/what-it-is-like-to-read-proust-by-henry-oliver\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T06:38:40","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T06:38:40","slug":"what-it-is-like-to-read-proust-by-henry-oliver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/2026\/06\/01\/what-it-is-like-to-read-proust-by-henry-oliver\/","title":{"rendered":"What it is like to read Proust &#8211; by Henry Oliver"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The quest was all\u2014the journey of moral redemption was a tale\u2014then the tale became domesticated\u2014and then it went into the interior. The interior quest is exemplified by Proust, but it was perfected, too, by Henry James. In reading Henry James, I had been learning to read Proust.<\/p>\n<p>Reading Proust in spurts and intervals is like having a recurring dream in which the dream-world is familiar, many of the people and aspects are recognizable, but where the action is perpetually unfolding at the pace and on the terms of the dreamscape, so that there is not only no rush to finish, but no sense of an ending, no compulsion to advance: one simply enters the dream of the book and continues.<br \/>\n\u2014 Read on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commonreader.co.uk\/p\/what-it-is-like-to-read-proust?utm_source=post-email-title&#038;publication_id=120973&#038;post_id=199213648&#038;utm_campaign=email-post-title&#038;isFreemail=true&#038;r=3o9&#038;triedRedirect=true&#038;utm_medium=email\">www.commonreader.co.uk\/p\/what-it-is-like-to-read-proust<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The quest was all\u2014the journey of moral redemption was a tale\u2014then the tale became domesticated\u2014and then it went into the interior. The interior quest is exemplified by Proust, but it was perfected, too, by Henry James. In reading Henry James, I had been learning to read Proust. Reading Proust in spurts and intervals is like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[135,9,134,136,36],"class_list":["post-712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-henry-james","tag-memory","tag-proust","tag-quests","tag-reading"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}