Within a Budding Grove

Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 2

By: Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott Moncrieff - translator

Narrated by: Neville Jason

Length: 26 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

Remembrance of Things Past is one of the monuments of 20th century literature. Neville Jason’s widely praised abridged version has rightly become an audiobook landmark and now, upon numerous requests, he is recording the whole work unabridged which, when complete, will run for some 140 hours.

Within a Budding Grove is the second of seven volumes. The young narrator, experiencing his youthful sexuality, falls under the spell of a group of adolescent girls, succumbs to the charms of the enchanting Gilberte, and visits a brothel where he meets Rachel. His impressions of life are also stimulated by the painter, Elstir, and his encounter with another girl, Albertine.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Public Domain (P)2012 Naxos AudioBooks

Exponential detail

Proust provides so much detail in his writing that I’m not sure I could read it in a physical book. He draws us into his world in a way that is nearly intoxicating. As an audiobook, it’s superb.

Never Gets in Ocean

I thought, "Swann's Way" was a little better. In "Within a Budding Grove" the young Proust (he never gives a name or an age, but I thin he is 16) spends the summer with his grandmother and Francious at the sea-side resort of Balbec, which is really Carboug, France. Well, NOT ONE TIME does he get into the ocean! I thought that this was negligent by Proust. How do you go to ocean but not get in the water? Nevertheless, this is definitely four stars for me, and Neville Jason is excellent. May Mr. Jason rest-in-peace.

So funny ! Gorgeous language and insight accompanied by laugh out loud humor ,

Yes , it is a commitment ..but the twists and turns and hilarity keep you going ! This is the farthest I’ve gotten and taking a little break for the next installment but absolutely looking forward !

Fantastic narrator with unobtrusive French pronunciation

The narrator sounds like he understands what he's reading and pronounces French quite well and with only a few mistakes (e.g., with names ending -bourg). Highly recommended production!

Brilliant!

Enjoyed this reading of 'In A Budding Grove' very much! Now it's onward to The Guermantes Way!

The world’s greatest novel

The worlds, greatest novel, brilliantly, read aloud! This part is as great as all the others.

A great way to read a challenging book.

I would read along whilst listening to this. That way, I was able to stay focused on the long and beautiful sentences. So glad I found this.

Proust never ceases to astound.

On my second go at Proust he has only improved, deepened and become all the more rewarding.

Philosophy and Psychology in guise of Literature

If one is not emotionally repulsed by the snobbery and pretentious French world at the time of the Dreyfus affair described within this book than one probably is missing out on what the author is trying to get at. Volume I needs to be read in order to follow what's going on in this book. The first fourth of the book wraps up the story from the previous volume. Marcel, the narrator's, name is not mentioned in this book and is only briefly mentioned in the first book. The maternal grandmother doesn't even recall Marcel's family name when polite convention required it. I'm intrigued by Odette (Swann's wife) and I'm anxious to see how she comes back into the story. This story mostly covers a season at a resort and how Marcel would reflect on how he experienced falling in love. Our memories are shaded by who we have become and the author illustrates that by his story telling.

Proust could best be shelved under Philosophy or Psychology rather than Literature. Our experiences of the world are determined by what our prior beliefs were weighted by our expectations of what we thought was going to happen discounted by what actually did happen. Or in other words, we are all Bayesians. Proust gets that and will show how we always are extrapolating from the past into our interpolation of the 'now' and projecting a future. Sartre quotes Proust extensively in his 'Being and Nothingness' for a reason. (Though, I seriously doubt Proust would have thought of himself as an Existentialist if he had lived into the 1940s, but I suspect he would have been comfortable with the Phenomenologist label in the style of Gadamar as laid out in 'Truth and Method'. One gets the similar lessons in each book, but Proust reads like a story instead of reading like a dry philosophy text book).

Almost every other page in this book has a wry observation or two on being-in-the-world and the story is only acting as a pretense in order for the reader to understand deeper truths about being human. The world is not best experienced by atomization (that's a Nietzsche word and sentiment and the author within this book refers to Nietzsche many times). The totality of the whole through our familiarity of our being-in-the-world is how we must cope with our understanding about our own taking a stand on our own being. Even though, we are constantly in a Bayesian trap (the author doesn't use the word Bayesian but he continuously describes how we create our experiences in those terms).

One of the wry observations the author made is that even though we may dream about animals, animals are different from humans because they have reason with certainty and humans have reason without certainty. It's not important if one agrees with that sentiment (though, I do, and it's actually one of the better definitions I've seen for what makes humans different from animals), what is fascinating about this book is it has many psychological insights that are worth pondering. Another observation, when our inclinations are formed or discovered in our youth if we deny those inclinations latter in life we will be inauthentic to ourselves and much the less for it. The author was specifically referring to himself as a writer but it's easy to generalize that sentiment in to other areas.

It's our phrases (scrapes of music, works of art, or lines in a book) that make up our life and give us our understanding for the sublime. A real artist needs to break the mimetic trap from which we our thrown into the world and break free from the imitation of the 'they'. The narrator, Marcel, believes that a great piece of art such as a great book can help us move beyond the herd mentality of the they and allow us to transcend (he'll say that or equivalently in the narrative). There are a lot of deep thoughts within this book, but one needs to discover them for oneself and just be aware that this book does not read like 'The Girl on the Train' because it has something it wants to give to the reader beyond mere mindless repetition of stale story telling.

Things Change In Unexpected Ways

Where does Within a Budding Grove rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

As a very good one.

Who was your favorite character and why?

The Baron de Charlus, whose erratic nature causes him to steal every scene in which he appears.

Have you listened to any of Neville Jason’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Yes, in other volumes, and he is always exceptional.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The scene in which the narrator has an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia and loss merely from the view of a copse of trees receding on the horizon.