Chapter 3 Summary and Analysis

In Search of Lost Time is a long and quite labyrinthine book. In the fifth volume of the book, a single sentence is so long that it would run for four meters if typed out in standard-sized book text. Proust's elaborate and long descriptions are legendary. An early French publisher failed to understand "why a chap needs thirty pages to describe how he tosses and turns in bed before falling asleep" (pg. 33.)

No contemporary publishers "got" Proust at the beginning of his career because of this long-winded prose and so he was forced to initially self-publish. Proust continues to have this reputation, such that the "All-England Summarise Proust Competition" was held by the comedy troupe Monty Python, which aimed to find the most succinct summary of Proust's many volumes of text.

Why did Proust create such long-winded writing? Proust provides some...