Funny and full of sex: why you should read Proust’s In Search of Lost Time | Letters

Readers strike an encouraging note for those sceptical of the joys of Proust, saying it has plenty to make it worth perservering

I read all seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time over a nine-month period. In answer to Mike Bromberg (Letters, 26 May), a great deal happens besides the famous madeleine incident: the advent of electric lighting, motorcars and aeroplanes, not to mention endless romances and social intrigues. My memory is that every hundred pages or so of tedium would yield five to 10 pages of the most revelatory reading that I have ever experienced. Was it worth it? Totally. Would I do it again? Probably not. But I won the bet.
Bill Gaver
London

• Proust is not inaccessible. I read most of it in French on the Métro during my year abroad in Paris. It was the 1960s, and being buried in a book was a good way of deterring unwanted male attention. For anyone who fears that nothing happens, read on – there is a great variety of sex, for example, and plenty of it.
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