Within a Budding Grove: Madame Swann at Home: Cheers: 11/20/09

Next week here in the United States it will be Thanksgiving weekend. As I will be too preoccupied with driving down to South Pasadena, eating turkey and basically enjoying spending time with my relatives, I won't be reading or posting about Proust next week.

I'm now through page 60 of the second volume of In Search of Lost Time, Within a Budding Grove (A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs) and this section has me thinking of Cheers, that old NBC sitcom that ran 11 years (1982-1993). I basically grew up watching it, being in elementary school when it started and in college when it ended.

Marcel now has gone from wanting to write but suffering from writer's block to just not wanting to write at all. So he spends his time listening to his parents shooting the breeze. Mostly he records his thoughts on the bullshitting sessions between M. de Norpois and his father. The escalating claims by M. de Norpois and the father's occasional tangential replies reminds me of Cliff and Norm who would spend nearly every episode of Cheers talking about stuff that had no practical use for whatever was going on in the bar or with the patrons or employees of the bar while drinking their beers. Despite being completely useless everyone seemed to like the two and M. de Norpois and Marcel's father seem to also be popular for no apparent reason. Now being French gentry, I doubt they're drinking the same cheep beer as Cliff and Norm but their conversations are just as off base.

Slipped into the middle of "Cliff" and "Norm's" bar talk, there are also more thoughts on the new Madame Swann. After much debate, the general consensus is that the marriage must be a joke. No one can take the Swann pairing seriously (apparently not even Odette as some gossipers speculate).

See you back in two weeks for my thoughts on pages 61-90.

Swann's Way posts:

Lisa's First Word, Baby Mine, I Sing the Body Electric, The Lady in Pink, Bleeding Gums Murphy, Caturday, Cherry Blossoms, Marge Simpson, Liana Telfer, Bender in Love, Margaret Dumont, Hyacinth Bucket, Rose, Mildred Krebs, Pepé Le Pew, Jack Harness, Cordelia Chase, Saffron, Thomas O'Malley.

Within a Budding Grove posts:

Nanowrimo, Cheers, Robert Langdon, Kif and Amy, Dead Weight, Clark Kent, Lex Luthor, Paris is a Lonely Town, And Then There's Maude, A Cafe Terrace at Night, North by Northwest, Top Hat, Chez Deetz, Ah, My Goddess!, David, Auntie Mame, Brunhilde Esterhazy, Gusteau's, Shell Beach.

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