Rock & Bach

In Search of Lost Time is one of these books that don’t really end, and not just because it goes on for over 3,000 pages. I remember finishing it for the first time some six years ago and saying to myself, “Well, there’s no way around it. I guess I have to read the whole damn thing again.” It isn’t until Time Regained that you find out how the thing gets written in the first place, which is (strangely enough) what the book is about. My second time through is taking much longer: it’s true that I no longer have pop quizzes to keep me diligent, but it’s also because I can’t help wanting to read it backwards - everything and everyone in the book undergoes such incredible transformations that it’s nearly impossible to remember what they were like when you and Marcel first encountered them. You can almost feel yourself forgetting as the pages mount.

Brahms does things in reverse too: the first movement theme of the G major violin sonata never really sounds the same once you’ve heard what happens to it in the third movement. You go back to the first movement to hear what you remember and find that it’s no longer there.