Swann’s Way

This is the book that Max loans Lorelai after she said she always wanted to read Proust.

It is the first volume of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and begins with the narrator’s childhood, centred on his family’s country house in the village of Combray. M. Swann is a neighbour of the family, with one of their favourite country walks being past his house – Swann’s Way. M. Swann will end up being a major character in the novel, and the narrator greatly attracted to his daughter, Gilberte Swann.

We learn later that it took Rory ages to read the book, having to renew it at the library ten times (if she’s not exaggerating, she may have taken 4-5 months to read it, depending on how long the library allows books to be checked out).

Lorelai tells Rory she only read the first sentence of Swann’s Way, which is: “For a long time I used to go to bed early”. That seems rather soon to give up, but later she tells Max she read the first twenty pages, which she exaggerates as all one sentence. The first twenty pages or so are the “Overture”, all of which are involved with that first going to bed.

Lorelai defends herself by saying she is too busy to begin reading the “longest book known to man”. Presumably she means the entire seven volumes, which are over 4000 pages long as a whole. It is indeed the longest novel in the world according to the Guiness World Book of Records.

Lorelai is not alone. Many readers have abandoned their attempt to read Swann’s Way, which has a beautiful style, but very lengthy, dense paragraphs with meticulous observations, and a plot so painfully slow, discursive, and ambiguous that it sometimes seems not to have one at all.

Those who complete it may take years to do so, and just managing to finish the book, let alone enjoy or understand it, is often considered a rare feat in itself.

(I don’t know whether one of the original titles for Gilmore Girls, The Gilmore Way, was an allusion to this book).