Heartbreaking news. When I was living in the Bay Area, I saw #MichaelTilsonThomas conduct five of the #Mahler symphonies in the span of about a year (1998). These included a double bill of the Fifth and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, the latter with Frederica von Stade. 🧵(1/2)

I’m no translator but this I believe: if the original does not contain a grammatical error and your #translation does, you're wrong. Sometimes “de” translates as “from” and sometimes it translates as “to”! 😂 #Proust #Proustsky

Your annual reminder not to mess with this bitch. Happy birthday, Patti LuPone. Three times! Three times! #pattilupone

If you know Charlotte Brontë only through Jane Eyre…well, I know Charlotte Brontë only through Jane Eyre. And I still want to wish her a happy birthday! #charlottebronte #janeeyre #booksky

About three minutes late. Happy birthday, Dusty Springfield! #dustyspringfield

Cheer up, Charles. It's your birthday! #Baudelaire #Proust #Proustsky

"It's always the optics with this guy." —Roger Shattuck, author of Proust's Binoculars, I don't know, maybe #Proust #Proustsky

I’m no translator but this I believe: if the original does not contain a sentence fragment that obviously slipped past the proofreader and your #translation does, you’re wrong. #Proust #Proustsky

Re-upping this to celebrate the birthday of Émile #Zola. #Proust #Proustsky

Hey, @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social, two burning #Bioy questions. Will your upcoming #Borges ed. Martino be translated complete? Also, apparently you guys are publishing a new translation of La invención de Morel. Will your #translation by Simms then go out of print, or will you be keeping it? Thanks.

Happy birthday, Laurette Taylor, seen here cosplaying the Narrator's grand-mère. 😉 "…as it reached me in isolation, with no distracting facial features, I discovered how gentle her voice sounded, perhaps more than ever." The Guermantes Way, tr. Peter Bush. #Proust #Proustsky

#Proust was no mathematician but he knew math. When he wrote of a condition in this sense, he knew that it was necessary, sufficient, neither, or both, and that these are the only two modifiers that apply—nécessaire and suffisante. @academic.oup.com's Brian Nelson and Adam Watt seem to get it. 🧵1/2

Yet again rereading #RogerShattuck, leading me back to this favourite passage. The Narrator has figured out that Miss Sacripant is Odette and asks Elstir is he is Monsieur Biche. Elstir gives an unapologetic, big-hearted, instructive response, tr. @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social. #Proust #Proustsky

What a convergence. #Kafka writes about #Cervantes in an anthology compiled by #Borges and #Bioy-Casares. #booksky

Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi by Jorge Luis #Borges and Adolfo #Bioy-Casares, tr. Norman Thomas di Giovanni. The intricacy, ingenuity, and logic of six #AgathaChristie novels packed into 160 pages. #booksky #detectivefiction #translation

Happy birthday, Stéphane #Mallarmé. Grand-mère found dread and weariness (Bush), alarm and exhaustion (CKSM, Treharne), "effroi" and "fatigue" (Proust) inseparable from his late poems. Heads-up: one of these comes from the year before his death. 😉 Music by Maurice #Ravel. 🧵(1/5) #Proust #Proustsky

If you see this, share a #randomshelfie. #booksky

I'm no translator but this I believe: if the original does not contain a grammatical error and your #translation does, you're wrong. #Proust #Proustsky

Someone please tell me if the Liza memoir is good enough to interrupt #Borges for. Serious question. I love them both. #LizaMinnelli

Happy birthday, D.J. Enright. Thanks for giving us an edition of Proust that honours both him and Scott Moncrieff, and that in some nifty, unobtrusive ways (fodder for another day) actually betters Tadié. #Proust #Proustsky

Had a little exchange with @poemakontsa.bsky.social about why I abhor Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life. #Proust #Proustsky

Paused what I was reading because I picked this up, checked out the first few pages, and couldn’t stop. I think it’s those tenses; they keep the pace at a zip. Anyhoo, only 140 pages. A joy from Mathias Énard and @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social.

Three incredible Mathias Énard used-book finds, plus one. Compass and Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants, tr. @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social; and The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild, tr. @terribleman.com. My first Énards! Compass is a hardcover first edition, first printing. 🧵 (1/4)

Prove this place is good for culture and post a good book cover. #Proust #Proustsky

The one video I would save from a burning YouTube. In incredible voice and with an over-the-top attitude, she had her audience gasping at one point. All Puccini encores: Vissi d’arte, Chi il bel sogno, Tu tu tu piccolo iddio. Then scroll down for more. Happy 99th birthday tomorrow, #LeontynePrice!

A week late. Happy birthday, Renata Tebaldi. You will never not be hilarious. #Handel

I realized recently that I will not live long enough to read all the books in my tsundoku. It made me so sad I went out and bought some more.

Happy birthday, #Mozart! The passage below is from In the Shadow of Girls in Blossom, tr. Charlotte Mandell. Dang if I know what concerto has the piano replying to the cello, so instead I give you my favourite, K 488, with Murray Perahia. See above to play.

Happy birthday, #Mozart! See above for mention of a mystery concerto in In the Shadow of Girls in Blossom, tr. @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social. Here is a performance of K 488 with Murray Perahia. #Proust #Proustsky

Happy birthday, #Mozart! The Duc de Guermantes loves him. So he also loves Auber, but that he loves Mozart is what's important. The passage below is from The Guermantes Way, tr. Peter Bush. Unroll thread for a performance of "Dove sono" by the magnificent Gundula Janowitz. #Proust #Proustsky

Almost forgot! Happy birthday, #Mozart! The passage below is from The Swann Way, tr. Brian Nelson. Unroll thread for a performance of the Clarinet Quintet, K 581 with Antony Pay. #Proust #Proustsky

I got tired of lugging that single-volume brick around. So look what I got! So handy, only 7 x 4.25". And such pretty covers too. (The brick, shown for reference, measures 8.125 x 5.5".) Direct from #Gallimard. #Proust #Proustsky

My grandfather was the small-time mayor of his small town. With his own money, he put up a children's library that in my young mind I thought he did just for me. I still do. He and that library gave me a lifelong love of books, imagination, sharing, solace, silence.

Happy birthday, Henri #FantinLatour. Still lifes of flowers and fruit incoming. #Proust #Proustsky (The Guermantes Way, tr. Peter Bush, Oxford World’s Classics, 2025).

On this day in 1898, #EmileZola published "J'Accuse!…," his blistering criticism of the trial and imprisonment of French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus. In #Proust, the #DreyfusAffair is used as a marker for the shifting of the social kaleidoscope #Proustsky

We read #Proust because of what he has to say about love. Happy, happy birthday, #EdmundWhite. (Penguin Lives: Marcel Proust, Viking Penguin, 1999.) #Proustsky #booksky #gaylit

Mark Treharne splits this glorious sentence from The Guermantes Way into two. Peter Bush does not. Yay, Peter Bush! #Proust #Proustsky

Happy birthday, Terence Kilmartin. His “A Guide to Proust” is no longer in print as a standalone but is still available (revised by wife Joanna, herself a translator) as an appendix to the Modern Library edition. #Proust #Proustsky

Always fun to have something nice to look forward to.

Silkworms, paintboxes, and well-written books. There are also marrons glacés and rubies elsewhere. Happy New Year! #proust #proustsky (The Swann Way, tr. Brian Nelson)

Have a Madame de Réveillon (Anna de Noailles) Christmas, everyone. #JeanSanteuil #Proust #Proustsky

Have a Jean Santeuil Christmas, everyone. #Proust #Proustsky

Happy birthday, Jean Racine. A lot of #Proust adjacencies here. Text by #Racine ("Verbe égal au Très-Haut"), music by #Fauré, whose piano teacher #Saint-Saëns encouraged him to compose, this chorus dedicated to #Franck being one of his earliest works. #Proustsky

Happy birthday, #JaneAusten. I love this edition of her novels from Anchor Books, annotated and edited by David M. Shapard. Text on the verso side, annotations on the recto side. As you can see, even the covers are annotated! Emma comes in at 897 pages.

Put this down a while back; seemed a bit too dense for me. But it gets prominent mention in Adam Watt's introduction to Brian Nelson's The Swann Way, alongside Malcolm Bowie's Proust Among the Stars and Chistopher Prendergast's Mirages and Mad Beliefs, so I'm picking it up again. #Proust #Proustsky

The closing sentences of Peter Brooks' wonderful introduction to The Guermantes Way, in the new translation by Peter Bush from Oxford. While waiting for my paperback I'm reading my pdf, if slowly (not a fan of ebooks). But it's hard to resist! #Proust #Proustsky

I finished this book without figuring out what "jerk" is and why it translates from "cloche," or what "marle" is and why it translates to "big shot," or if "pimp" (which translates from "mac") means what it usually does. I never so much admired a book that confused me as much. #translation #genet

A day late. Happy birthday, Benjamin #Britten. His last vocal work was the cantata Phaedra, whose libretto included a translation of Phèdre by Jean #Racine. The play, of course, figures prominently in #Proust. This recording is by #JessyeNorman, posthumously released. #Proustsky

I haven't even gotten Peter Bush's The Guermantes Way in the mail, but here it is, a release date for Helen Constantine's Sodom and Gomorrah. (The Blackwell's release date is three months earlier, for some reason.) #Proust #OxfordProust #Proustsky global.oup.com/academic/pro...

There is the religion and philosophy stuff of course but, make no mistake, Dick Wolf owes Law & Order to this. Happy birthday, #Dostoevsky.