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Whose style and approach to the literary project do you prefer and why?
My preference is for Proust by far. His style seems to me to capture the depths of consciousness, where Joyce skims (though widely) across its surface. And I find Proust's style simply far more pleasurable to read. I like the wisdom of his words better, their music.
I thoroughly enjoyed Swann's Way for some odd reason, probably the poetic nature of it as I never felt that I was getting a great deal out of it but at the same time didn't want to stop reading. I've gathered that Swann's Way is also the least accomplished of the 7 volumes (it also seems to be the one read when most claim to have read Proust...as if they have read all the volumes) and so I look forward to the time I can read all the others. As for Joyce, well I put down Ulysses after reading Part 1. I don't have many great things to say about it, though I might like the story if written a little less stylistically...and "regionally" if that makes sense.
Although strictly technically and judging from a perspective that implies the pure artistic process and ritual, Joyce is superior, and one of the most valuable to have ever existed, I tend to side with Proust based solely on the interior music of his sentences, the tones of his words—there's a specific melancholy present in every line of his books, completely ineffable and thoroughly vague, and yet it makes me cry.