Thank you for posting this excellent article. It makes me want to read Gravity’s Rainbow again.

There is a very pleasant music album of Proustiana called “Le Sonate de Vinteuil” by Maria and Nathalia Milstein. You would also find it helpful to look at “Paintings in Proust” by Eric Karpeles.

You may also enjoy Alain de Botton’s book “How Proust Can Change Your Life.”

I love the surreal passages of Gravity’s Rainbow and Ulysses and how the language just washes over you. It’s especially wonderful if the book is read out loud. But I love the more straightforward parts too, the literary and historical allusions, the sly comments. I know I can always pick up these books again, any time, and find something new to think about.

I got off to a slow start with this book too, but it got better as I went along.

You may find the longer works of Charles Dickens a little easier if you first read A Christmas Carol. It’s much shorter than A Tale of Two Cities, has a familiar plot, and the style is more direct.

I think that Oliver Twist is usually considered the easiest to read of Dickens’s longer works. Reading one 19th century novel will make you more accustomed to the language and writing styles of the day and your future reading will be easier.

Don’t feel bad if you can’t finish War and Peace - it’s notoriously long and difficult. But it is definitely worth the trouble!

Thank you for this thoughtful comment. I read “Siddhartha” as a teenager and found it very moving. I need to re-read it in light of the decades since then.