Selected Letters of Marcel Proust – A La Recherche du Temps Perdu is ranked second on The Greatest Books of All Time site, it is also second in the Le Monde Top 100 Books selection, and it is also part of The Guardian Best 100 Books of All Time and other prestigious lists, including mine – you have more than five thousand notes on magnum opera from the aforementioned and other GOAT pages, together with another five thousand notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other sites on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

Selected Letters of Marcel Proust – A La Recherche du Temps Perdu is ranked second on The Greatest Books of All Time site, it is also second in the Le Monde Top 100 Books selection, and it is also part of The Guardian Best 100 Books of All Time and other prestigious lists, including mine – you have more than five thousand notes on magnum opera from the aforementioned and other GOAT pages, together with another five thousand notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other sites on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

 

10 out of 10

 

A La Recherche du Temps Perdu https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/albertine-disparue-by-marcel-proust.html is the best chef d’oeuvre in my Top 100, although Kingsley Amis, at times Somerset Maugham have masterpieces that are close to the same level, and the letters of Marcel Proust prove the immense talent of this genius

 

I think it was in The Unbearable Lightness of Being https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being.html by Milan Kundera that I have read about geniuses: ‘we must limit the use of this significant word, there are only four or five, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Albert Einstein…the meaning will be lost if we abuse it’

Albert Proust is nonetheless the quintessential genius, at least if you ask me, he has had a great influence, ever since I have first read A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, some of the volumes, as a teenager, which was both wonderful and perilous, our magnificent luminary Andrei Plesu cautions us when it comes to suggested reading

 

At seventeen one is overwhelmed by the magnum opus, indeed, at any age this is a challenge, and misunderstanding it is one of the issues- for instance, I had no idea that Proust was gay, and therefore the characters have a double identity, since he is the narrator and hero, the women he loves would have been men in real life

There are many benefits – many more than caveats I would say – of reading even when too young such a chef d’oeuvre, in my case, I am sure it helped with the attitude towards sexual minorities, I have mentioned I did not know about the sexuality of the author, however, he has written Sodome et Gomorrhe https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/12/sodome-et-gomorrhe-by-marcel-proust.html which is edifying

 

We have talks at the sauna, and gym downtown, I was thinking that that serves the purposes of a café of sorts, we socialize there, and even indulge in ‘dialectical confrontation’, some are supportive of The Orange Atrocity’, because ‘he has taken down those LGBTQ+’ agitators and they like that so much, as to accept any abomination

There is this wide spread feeling, even belief that Woke culture has pushed them into a corner, they see the movies as making propaganda for alternative (read gay and the like) lifestyles, it is in the education, marches they have seen in the west, etc. and I am pleased that thanks to Marcel Proust I am comfortable in opposition to this

 

That is, I see that there has been excess on the progressive side of the argument, pushing maybe too far the request for inclusion, DEI and the like, only that effort was made to compensate for millennia of suffering, torture and death, I try to enlighten these interlocutors on the fact that gay and other minorities are still persecuted…

Not that this is happening all the time, mostly, I just walk out, since I cannot stand those radicals (strange that the Orange Eejit keeps screaming radical left lunatics, when in fact he is radical and lunatic) and it is useless to try and demonstrate almost anything to such hoi polloi, there are figures who are toxic, like second degree smoking or worse…

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

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