Marcel must have taken to his bed with a truckload of madeleines when he received this:
At the end of this 712-page manuscript…one has no notion – none – of what it is about. What is it all for? What does it all mean? Where is it all leading to? It’s impossible to know! It’s impossible to say!
Jacques Normand for the publishing house Fasquelle, rejecting Swann’s Way
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Jacques Normand, was he a poet? Clearly one would never know it. Assessment skills? They lacked a boost. Prophet status? Fail — he did miss Proust.
I hadn’t made that connection, but you’re probably right about Jacques Normand, I just read that he also wrote under the name Jacques Madeleine – so Marcel did make an impression, it seems!
Think I’ll pass on this one.
Leslie
It would make you very cross, Leslie.
Oh dear can’t have that.