The most accessible part of In Search of Lost Time (Proust)

The second Part of Marcel Proust's "Swann's Way" (Lydia Davis translation), the section called Swann in Love, is in man ways a radical departure and break from the much more highly stylized, elusive opening Part, Combray, in which the narrator Marcel unfolds all the themes of the seven-book novel, trying to recover all of the memories of his childhood, a much more interior, first-person account - today, perhaps it would be a memoir (unfortunately) - whereas Swann in Love begins at least as a more conventional novel - Marcel describing another set of characters and himself playing no role other than narrator (these events occurring around the time of Marcel's birth), all of which make it the most accessible part of the entire Recherche, and explain why Swann in Love was published as a separate work, by Modern Library, many years ago (and why I tried to read it in high school and couldn't understand a thing) and why it was made into a movie, a horrible movie actually, which I remember reviewing for the Journal and beginning: The only people who could possibly like this movie are those who love Proust, and they will hate it. Swann in Love is the account of Swann's affair (and later marriage to) Odette de Crecy, a "courtesan," as Marcel delicately calls her, and how Odette brought Swann to the little, pretentious salon at the Verdurins' - much of the opening pages devoted to hilarious descriptions of some of the habituees, notably the foolish Dr. Cottard unsure what opinion to take on anything and waiting to catch clues and signals before smiling or frowning, poised with a weak, ambiguous smile, and Mme Verdurin who wants to be seen as gay and affable and affects a pose that allows her to seem to be laughing (face buried in her hands) while not having to laugh at all - she's afraid of dislocating her jaw.