Anyone who has ever read Proust knows what I mean when I say that after reading "In Search of Lost Time," you find yourself in a post-Proust desert, as nothing else seems worth reading. All you wish for is for Proust to start over again, but of course, he can no longer do that. So you aimlessly read everything about Proust, both critical and biographical, but it’s not the same. Eventually, you realize that you have been living in a Proust withdrawal for quite some time, and life goes on, just a bit grayer. To combat these withdrawal symptoms, Anne Carson in "Albertine. 59 Love Exercises" engages in her own unique linguistic and sonic contortions: 59 aphorisms along with 16 appendices on Albertine, Proust, Samuel Beckett, and Roland Barthes. Such brevity has never existed before.