8. The ISOLT is much ado about nothing 

8- Proustaverses 

The entire ISOLT is about nothing. The hilarious Monty Python sketch about the “Proust Summaries” world championship brings this to life. The writer Proust is a windbag suffering for the disease called ‘logorrhea verbositalis’ who misuses thousands of pages to ultimately have nothing essential to say. The publisher Fasquelle, whom he approaches first, returns the manuscript with the message that he has no idea what it is about. Publisher Ollendorf, whom he approaches second, also returns the manuscript because he judges that no one is waiting for a book in which thirty pages are needed to describe how someone turns over in bed before falling asleep. 

8- Proustophiles 

Quite the opposite, it’s the other way around. The ISOLT is an encyclopedia of visual arts, literature, music, botany, political developments, militaria, developmental psychology through the different life stages of the protagonists combined with explorations of the human mind and the kaleidoscope of relational interactions. 

Everything is offered in a form that carefully blends different literary procedures: descriptions follow essayistic reflective paragraphs, sharp dialogues alternate with dreamy sentences, the central characters evolve through the indefinite time course, the Reader is directly addressed when the Narrator indicates that he will later explain a certain event (and that could be 500 pages further on!), prolepsis alternates with analepsis, a poetic rhythm of long, sometimes even very long sentences, alternates with short, staccato sentences, intertextual remarks refer to the great works of world literature, the many mentions of historical figures create a deepening context and show Marcel Proust’s erudition while the Reader does not have to feel inferior because he or she can choose to delve into the many intertextual clues or let them pass. 

Nowhere is the style patronizing, know-it-all or pedantic, but everything is offered in a way that invites the Reader to take from it what suits him or her best at that moment.