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7.3 In Search of Lost Time: Wasting Time

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Mar 4, 2026

Alex Ross, The New Yorker music critic known for cultural commentary, and Hannah Freed-Thall, NYU professor studying taste and modernism. They discuss wasted time in Proust, salon life and social pretension. They trace habit, involuntary memory, art’s role in remaking waste, and the novel’s social satire and aesthetics.

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ANECDOTE

Litvak's Take Made Volume Three Endearing

Hannah Freed-Thall recalls Joseph Litvak's reading that Proust has an "insatiable taste for waste," especially in the Duchess of Guermantes.
She says this reading made her fond of Volume 3 despite its excesses.

insights

INSIGHT

Social Saloons Expose Performed Distinction

Society scenes in The Guermantes Way function as comedic but revealing long-drawn examinations of vanity and artificial rules.
Hannah Freed-Thall finds humor and tenderness amid absurd behavior that exposes how people perform distinction.

insights

INSIGHT

High Society Is A False Transcendence

Adam Coleman and Joshua Landy treat high society as an alluring but illusory form of transcendence that ultimately disappoints.
The narrator chases belonging in salons before realizing dukes and duchesses are ordinary and cruel.

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Style as Deep Expression

00:35 • 1min

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Wasted Time in High Society

01:43 • 58sec

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Taste, Waste, and The Guermantes Way

Humor and Cruelty in Salon Life

04:04 • 1min

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Why the Narrator Chases High Society

05:24 • 4min

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Habit: Rescue and Deadening

09:44 • 4min

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Cult of Art and Pretension

13:32 • 1min

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Baron de Charlus: Enchantment and Revelation

14:44 • 3min

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Sleep, Gender, and Time Transcendence

17:47 • 1min

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Observers vs. Creators in Aesthetic Life

19:16 • 3min

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Proust as Sociologist of Distinction

Sodome et Gomorrhe I - 1

Marcel Proust

Dans Sodome et Gomorrhe, le narrateur surprend les ébats du baron de Charlus et de Jupien, révélant l'homosexualité de Charlus et menant à une réflexion sur les 'hommes-femmes', comparés aux habitants de Sodome. De retour à Balbec, il retrouve Albertine, dont il soupçonne les penchants lesbiens, ravivant sa jalousie ; entre mondanités parisiennes et séjours balnéaires, il oscille entre amour et rupture, annonçant son intention de l'épouser. Ce volume, publié en 1921-1922, est le dernier paru du vivant de Proust et marque un tournant psychologique et romanesque dans l'œuvre.

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The Guermantes Way

In Search of Lost Time, Volume III

Marcel Proust

Dans Le Côté de Guermantes, le narrateur, jeune homme fragile, s'immerge dans la haute société parisienne du début du XXe siècle. Il fréquente son ami Saint-Loup, découvre les salons aristocratiques, souffre de la maladie de sa grand-mère et idolâtre la duchesse de Guermantes, dont la réalité déçoit ses fantasmes. L'œuvre dissèque les illusions amoureuses, les hiérarchies sociales et le pouvoir de la mémoire, marquant une étape clé dans la maturation du protagoniste au sein de la vaste fresque proustienne.

• Mentioned in 42 episodes

In Search of Lost Time

Swann's Way

Stephane Heuet

Marcel Proust

This graphic adaptation of Marcel Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time' presents the first volume, 'Swann's Way', in a compressed and visually engaging format. The adaptation, likened to a 'piano reduction of an orchestral score', retains the fundamental architecture and themes of Proust’s work, including time, art, and the elusiveness of memory. Stéphane Heuet's detailed illustrations bring to life the narrator Marcel's childhood memories in Combray, capturing the humor, wit, and memorable characters of Proust's original text. This adaptation is designed to make Proust's work more accessible while maintaining its essence and beauty.

#12690

• Mentioned in 4 episodes

The Storm

The World Economic Crisis and What It Means

Vince Cable

In 'The Storm', Vince Cable explains the causes of the global economic crisis and how policymakers should address it. He highlights the British government's complacency towards property price bubbles and high personal debt, which left Britain vulnerable. Cable argues against isolationism and nationalism, advocating for faith in liberal markets to maintain global economic progress.

#68174

The World According to Proust

Joshua Landy

The World According to Proust by Joshua Landy examines the philosophical depth of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, focusing on perception, memory, and selfhood. Landy reads Proust through lenses of cognitive science and continental philosophy to illuminate how the novel stages acts of attention and recollection. He argues that Proust offers not only literary but epistemological insights into how individuals constitute worlds through memory and aesthetic experience. The book situates Proust within broader intellectual debates, making his work accessible to readers interested in philosophy, psychology, and literary studies. Landy's scholarship highlights the ways Proust's narrative techniques reveal underlying structures of consciousness.

#97749

Modernism at the Beach

Hannah Freed-Thall

#33111

• Mentioned in 2 episodes

Wagnerism

Alex Ross

In 'Wagnerism', Alex Ross delves into the vast and complex legacy of Richard Wagner, examining how his music and ideas have intersected with literature, politics, philosophy, and other arts across more than 150 years. The book explores Wagner's influence on figures like Nietzsche, George Eliot, and Philip K. Dick, as well as his impact on modernism and contemporary culture.

#8767

• Mentioned in 6 episodes

Distinction

Pierre Bourdieu

Pierre Bourdieu's "Distinction" is a highly influential work in sociology, exploring the relationship between social class, taste, and cultural consumption. Bourdieu argues that cultural preferences are not merely individual choices but rather reflect and reinforce social hierarchies. He examines how different forms of cultural capital—knowledge, skills, and tastes—contribute to social stratification. The book analyzes various aspects of cultural life, including art, literature, and education, demonstrating how these practices are intertwined with power dynamics. Bourdieu's work has had a profound impact on fields such as sociology, cultural studies, and education, offering a critical perspective on the social construction of taste and cultural value.

#24975

• Mentioned in 2 episodes

La Captive

Christine Smallwood

The “lost time” of In Search of Lost Time can connote “wasted time,” and Marcel Proust’s narrator does confront wastes of time, through pretentious conversations and moments when habit takes control. But the novel makes much of this waste, and we glimpse something beyond wasted time when involuntary memory prompts the narrator to consider existence beyond a drably habitual scheme.

Christine Smallwood reads here from her book La Captive, where, reflecting on concepts of art and wasted time that the narrator considers, she writes, “Art is a record of the waste. It holds the waste, and changes it. Its material is time, and it makes time material.” In this episode, you'll hear how wasted time, the time of dull habits, gets remixed and reworked by Proust. And you’ll hear readings from the third and fourth volumes of the novel: The Guermantes Way and Sodom et Gomorrah.

Guests this season include: The New Yorker’s Alex Ross—see especially "Imaginary Concerts"; Christine Smallwood, author of La Captive; Rick Moody, author of The Ice Storm; Hannah Freed-Thall, author of Modernism at the Beach; and Joshua Landy, author of The World According to Proust.

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