Product Description
Albertine has made her escape from Marcel's Paris apartment, where his obsessive jealousy had turned her into a virtual prisoner. Not only is Marcel quite unprepared for the effect on him of her flight, but soon he is devastated by news of an even more irreversible loss. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Le temps d'une lecture
J'aime relire ce livre dans cette édition où le temps d'une lecture correspond au temps d'une vie. Proust me fait revivre ma propre vie, bien que les circonstances de notre existence soient très différentes. Je m'identifie non pas aux événements historiques de la vie du narrateur, mais aux émotions et aux réflexions que ceux-ci lui inspirent.

Good value for money
Very good binding and printing. I am also quite impressed with the delivery service. I do enjoy my purchasing this book.

complete in one volume, but jack-diddly for extras
What you're looking at is the entirety of Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" in ONE VOLUME, in the original French, with no introduction, no glossary, no character lists, no timelines, and no footnotes.All seven volumes are there without any abridgment.There is no English anywhere in the book.

You can guess from this that we're talking about one enormous brick of a text.

As far as I know, this is the only version of Proust available in one volume in either French or English.At least that's what it says on the back cover.So that's quite a boon, although -- unavoidably, I guess -- the print is a little small.There's also scant room in the margins to make notes.Lastly, for them to have brought this off in one volume (as you can probably guess), they had to use very thin paper.It seemsabout the thickness of the paper they use for those Norton anthologies.Anyhow, I've had to be quite sparing with my pen since your underlinings will likely show through to the next page.

So this particular edition is a great coffee table piece for thumbing through and impressing your friends.But when it comes to using it for the purpose for which it was intended (i.e., reading Proust), I have to say, I wouldn't do it again.Getting through Proust is difficult enough without it also being physically difficult!But this book is so huge it's hard to curl up with, and kind of exhausting for your hands to hold after a few pages.Lying in bed with it, you'll find it a real weight on your chest . . . literally!

Hence I advise that if you have gone off the deep end to the point where you're resolved to make it through the entirety of Proust in French, I would strongly advise you click away from this page and simply buy the seven Folio Classique volumes from Amazon's French site.They're all reasonably sized, and a perfect for taking along on the bus, to the beach, to the break room, etc.The gigantic all-in-one volume is hard to take around with you, and if you're doing Proust, it's not so much a project as a lifestyle, so you'll want the most mobile editions you can buy.

Still, I admit I experienced not a little satisfaction in seeing my bookmarker move slowly West to East through this volume's mountainous 2400 pages.

(This, by the way, is the text that was prepared under the direction of Jean-Yves Tadie.)

Think twice about getting this unwieldy edition
I would think twice before ordering this edition.It took several months to arrive and for some reason I thought I had ordered a set of the books.Instead, I got a big, unwieldy brick of a book with very small type.I've been trying to read it, but a lot of the time I do just as well by going to the Project Gutenberg site and reading the book there (but not all volumes are online yet). One advantage of reading online is the easy ability to look up vocabulary.

For the price, it's simply not worth it.

If you want to know time.
I have always been interested in time; whatever that is.
My first attempt(circa 1964) to understand time consisted of reading some very elementary texts on Einstein's theory of relativity. As I was romping through Einstein, a good friend introduced me to Proust's monumental work: A la recherche du temps perdu. I read and read and read and soon came to the conclusion that Proust had captured the very essence of psychological time. And the prose; so beautiful. Since that long ago time, I have read the thoughts of so many others on time: Faulkner, Mann, Kant, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Levinas, and most recently Hawking. The conclusion that I have come to is that if you really want to know TIME, then buy an inexpensive copy of Proust's great work and read, read, and read. Remember, you will ceratinly need much time. To the couple in Northern Germany; I resided in Bad Kreuznach, Germany for 8 months and it always made me think of Proust. I would welcome a comment from Northern Germany. Mead Whorton in The U.S.A. ... Read more

Product Description
Since the original, prewar translation there has been no completely new rendering of the French original into English. This translation brings to the fore a more sharply engaged, comic and lucid Proust. IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME is one of the greatest, most enjoyable reading experiences in any language. As the great story unfolds from its magical opening scenes to its devastating end, it is the Penguin Proust that makes Proust accessible to a new generation.Each book is translated by a different, superb translator working under the general editorship of Professor Christopher Prendergast. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Sturrock translation is awful
This latest translation of Proust's "Sodom and Gomorrah" may be more accurate or "truthful", but the reading experience is in my opinion wooden and stilted.

Moncreiff's original translation lends much more of a roll and lyrical quality to the writing and it makes for a much more satisfying experience. I can't speak for the other Penguin editions, but this volume was a huge disappointment such that I had had enough of it after the first 100 pages and went out and bought an older edition.

The five star reviews on here are very misleading as the majority are for the Modern Library edition. I suggest that it is these and other Moncreiff editions that should be sought out.

"The true persuasion of sexual jealousy": Harold Bloom
Volume IV of "In Search of Lost Time" begins in the afternoon of the day of Princess of Guermantes's party, the one that Marcel had looked forward for so long as his definitive entrance into the world of high society. That afternoon, by spying on them, Marcel discovers with his own eyes, for the first time, homosexuality, in the form of an encounter between the depraved Baron de Charlus and the tailor Jupien, Marcel's neighbor in the property of the Guermantes. Later that evening, Marcel attends the party, attended also by a cast of characters like very few in literature: Charlus himself, a Swann close to his death, and others. The Dreyfuss cause keeps winning adepts, among them the very Prince and Princess of Guermantes, as the injustice of the sentence is revealed. In the party, Marcel continues on his way to disappointment about noblesse: they are people just like everyone else, only with grand names and big egos, but not much more.

Days later, with his mother, Marcel returns to Balbec, where, alone in his room he finally feels all the weight and sorrow of his grandmother's death, which had happened a year and a half before or so. It is a profound passage about the perception of death, everyday indifference to it, and the memories left to us by our beloved's passing away. In Balbec, Marcel reencounters with Albertine, in that perverted play of seduction and deceit, of attraction and rejection, which foreshadows a sick relationship. Disturbed by the graphic discovery of homosexuality, Marcel broods a lot about it. Two women who stay at the same hotel, and who openly show their lesbianism, awaken in Marcel a deep suspicion about Albertine's mysterious life, and so begins a torment of permanent jealousy, of anxiety and anguish which reminds the reader of the similar episode, in times gone by, of the beginning of the relationship between Swann and Odette. Meanwhile, Marcel has simultaneous relationships with a couple of maids of the hotel (literally simultaneous).

Marcel rents a car to go around with Albertine through the countryside and the coast, deepening his relationship with the capricious, naughty, annoying and elusive Albertine. In her company, he begins to frequent the little band of the social-climbing Verdurins (where Swann had met Odette years before), in the country estate they have rented from the Marquises of Cambremer. The central part of the book narrates that summer in Balbec and its surroundings, above all the wide mosaic of characters surrounding the Verdurins: insecure but arrogant Doctor Cottard and his simple wife; musician Vinteuil; the rustic and silent sculptor Ski; Professor Saniette, pathetic and constantly humiliated; and Madame Verdurin herself, presumptuous and increasingly successful in society. Over this fresco is shown the repulsive couple of Charlus and musician Morel, son of a former servant of the Prousts. Morel is the worst kind of climber and representative of sexual and moral corruption. In contrast with what happens in the first three volumes, here it seems that it is the nobles who yearn to be accepted in bourgeois society, and not the other way around. It is the bourgeois who attract interesting people: intellectuals, scientists, artists. Charlus makes a fool of himself big time, pretending everybody ignores his homosexuality, when in fact he is the target of cruel jokes and gossip. So continues the great saga of memory, sex, love, longing, and social observation of the XX Century.

Like in no one of the previous volumes, in this one the subject of homosexuality is analyzed in all its complexity. Marcel and Albertine's relationship forebodes hell. Charlus begins to sink. The bourgeois approach triumph. Like in all the previous volumes, what astounds the reader is Proust's immense power of microscopic vision to analyze individuals and dissect societies. It includes a magical reflection on dreams, as well as precious depictions of landscapes, sexual assaults, personalities and emotions.

Wonderful
Sodom and Gomorrah makes it difficult for those who speak of Proust and attempt to reduce his grand work to mere flowery social observation. This is a bold and often disturbing installment of la recherché, as Marcel recalls brutal homosexual sadomasochism among two of the principle characters, and has to deal with great loss and self-loathing.

The narrator also returns us to the superficial world of the Verdurins, where Swann and Odette first made their interactions in Swann in Love.

Marcel falls deeply in love with Albertine, but later discovers that she has been involved in homosexual relationships with two women, mirroring Swann's problems with Odette. There are remarkable passages on the nature of love in here: "But if something brings about a violent change in the position of that soul in relation to us, shows us that it is love with others and not with us, then by beating of our shattered heart we feel that it is not a few feet away from us but within us that the beloved creature was. Within us, in regions more or less superficial" (pg. 720)

Sodom and Gomorrah is a deeply felt and complex development in Proust's extraordinarily full and beautiful search.

Where are the rest of the Penguin Deluxe Prousts?
I'm dying to buy the last three volumes of In Search of Lost Time in the new Penguin/Viking translations, but I can't find the Deluxe paperbacks with the slighly larger print--not in paperback or in hardback.What's up?

Volume 4 -- not volume 5
The naming of the British books makes it very confusing as to which volume is which. A previous review said that this is volume 5, but it is in fact volume 4: Sodom and Gomorrah. ... Read more

Product Description
Time Regained, the final volume of In Search of Lost Time, begins in the bleak and uncertain years of World War I. Years later, after the war’s end, Proust’s narrator returns to Paris and reflects on time, reality, jealousy, artistic creation, and the raw material of literature—his past life. This Modern Library edition also includes the indispensable Guide to Proust, compiled by Terence Kilmartin and revised by Joanna Kilmartin.

For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

You've come this far, don't stop now
If you've read the first four volumes of the Penguin Modern Classic, Proust's In Search of Lost Time, then don't let the publication restriction in the US stop you from buying the British text versions. Except for minor presentation, they are exactly the same that will be published in the US when the copyrights expire. The only differences (which are hardly a great obstacle to the enjoyment of reading the novel), are the footnotes in back and the original French lyrics which Proust occasionally quotes from in the body of the work -- apparently the British assume we colonial philistines do not know as much French as they do.

The introduction to The Fugitive I found hugely welcome -- British translator Carol Clark is unapologetically direct in summing up for us what the previous 4 volumes have been about -- a long wished for insight as I have been dying to know up to this point whether or not I have been truly getting Proust all along.

The curse and the blessing is that Proust died before he could give the final sign off on these manuscripts before publication. A curse because he most certainly would have removed or resolved many errors, and extended or rewritten many parts which are its weakest sections. A blessing in that, to be sure, there are in this and the next volume several obvious errors which a good copy editor would have detected and eliminated, but with time have become such a part of Proustian lore that they can no more be removed than say Jimmy Durante's nose shortened or Richard Burton's pockmarks removed or Marilyn Manson's makeup wiped clean.

And if one has lasted this long, the addiction to Proust's peregrinations from the plot to discuss seemingly unrelated topics and issues in minute detail - as seen from the other end of binoculars, as Roger Shattuck writes in Proust's Binoculars- one will not be at all bothered about any perceived sloppiness in these last two volumes. On the contrary, one will feel proud to detect them for oneself, and have a private chuckle about it as Proust is forgiven for what would be unacceptable by today's publishing standards.

SO don't wait four more years - you'll not care by then or have forgotten much of the threads of the protean plot which keeps all volumes tied into one - for most of what is written in these last volumes is the rich reward the reader deserves after having hung in there until the end, to discover the final fate and full identities of all the rich and lively characters we have come to love - Charlus and St Loup, Albertine and Gilberte, oh, and Mme Potbus' maid - remember her?


The Prisoner and the Fugitive translated by Carol Clark

This is almost a novel within the novel as it deals in two parts with the final resolution of the narrator's relationship to Albertine, this character who, more so than any other, the narrator has kept directly from the reader's curious view and desire to know her in her own voice.

Finding Time Again translated by Ian Patterson

The fates of the rest of the characters are revealed, and the narrator in this last volume himself ages (or catches up to the age at which he began telling this long story -- and we will learn why he had to write it all before his death, as the line between fiction and reality between Marcel the narrator and Marcel the famed French writer nearly disappears). This is the volume where, winding down at last from what was always a nebulous plot to one last social scene,like a curtain call, all the characters take their final bows together in old age (either still alive or in the narrator's memory of them). And there are some great surprises left to discover, which hopefully too much reading of Proustian criticism, biographies, and reviews hasn't already revealed to the `well informed but too reluctant to read A la Recherché du Temps Perdu for themselves' lover of literature.

On Its Own Plane
The final installment of Proust's grand `a la recherche du temps perdu' is a masterful and eloquent meditation on art, on the loss of love, and on the complex and enigmatic quality of experiencing relationships over the course of a lifetime. This is the period, the final breath of literary genius from the great Marcel Proust, who devoted his life to this great novel.

In `Time Regained,' the reader is permitted an extraordinary prolegomena on the writer's craft, a self-reflexive exposition of the literary form that prefigures post-modernity and the works of Brecht, Breton, Beckett, and all the rest of them. Proust creates a work that is more exacting, more precise and perspicacious than any work of aesthetic philosophy in the western tradition. He discloses that the art of writing is, in its essence, an act or translation.The artistic content is already contained within the mind and soul of the artist and the act of writing is an act of transporting the content to form.

This is a novel about time, and it requires time to read. In this way, Proust the reader develops a relationship with the work within the register of a temporal horizon, which mirrors the register of temporality internal to the characters and unfolding of the fictional universe that Proust has created. It is a joy to read.

Also included in this volume is Kilmartin's guide to Proust, a summation of all the central characters, events, and allusions in a la recherché for readers who (inevitably) get lost in Proust's complex literary web.

look for the new translation!
Perhaps the most exciting publishing event of the century so far is the new translation of "In Search of Lost Time," as it is now (and more accurately) called. Finding the last two volumes is a bit of a chore, but search for ISBN 0141180366 or "Prendergast Proust" or "Ian Patterson" on Amazon. I haven't read it, but I am impressed enough by the first two volumes in this new translations that I have ordered the final two from England, where they are available in hardcover. Viking has not yet published them in the U.S. (and may not, in my lifetime) but Amazon sells the paperbacks of the British Penguin edition. They are somewhat misleadingly titled "In Search of Lost Time," which is the series title. This volume is actually titled "Finding Time Again," and the translator is Ian Patterson. (Each book has its own translator, for a total of seven. Vol. 5 contains two books and features two translators.)

I give this Modern Library edition only four stars because I am convinced that the new translation is superior. Indeed, it's not entirely clear to me who the translator is, in this case; evidently not Fred Blossom, who did the original English translation when Scott-Montcrief died before finishing the work.

again, a misleading heading
Though it bears the title of Proust's seven-volume masterpiece, this is actually just the final volume, called "Finding Time Again" in this new translation. This particular book would be the British paperback edition, for the American press run has so far only given us four volumes, all of which are for sale on Amazon in a uniform style.

There are small but real differences between the British and American editions. With their greater tolerance for continental foibles, the Brits retained French punctuation, using dashes instead of quotation marks for conversation. They also retained the French wherever Proust makes a literary reference, providing a translation in the notes; in the American edition, this policy is reversed.

In reading the first two volumes ("Swanns' Way" and "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower") I noticed typographical errors that might well have resulted in converting the British to the American languages, rather than from French to English. For example, on page 95 of "In the Shadow" there is the phrase "Professor Cottard and his wife were not to partake of the pleasure" when the sentence should actually read "NOW to partake," since Swann has decided to introduce the Cottards to the Duchesse! Not earthshaking, but it does rather spoil Proust's little joke.

In short, these British paperbacks will serve very nicely if the American reader is in a hurry to complete the novel, and they may also be more free of errors. But I will probably wait for the uniform hardcover Viking volumes.

I haven't read Mr. Patterson's translation of volume seven, but I give it five stars based on the company it keeps.

Literary peerlessness
"Time Regained" is a dark ending to the "In Search of Lost Time" cycle, as Proust, sickly like his fictional narrator, unknowingly nears the end of his own life but senses its imminence.France, like the most of the rest of the world, is now a very different place.The Dreyfus affair is receding into the past under the shadow of the new war that has descended upon Europe, with Germany having ravaged Belgium and threatening to destroy London and Paris.

Many of the people with whom Marcel has associated throughout his life and whom we came to know so intimately through the pages of his chronicle are now dead, whether by disease, accident, old age, or the war.Those among the livinginclude the Baron de Charlus, who sympathizes with the Germans and frequents a hotel that serves as a male brothel; Bloch, who has de-Judaicized his name and has assumed an English chic; and Odette and her daughter Gilberte, the latter now herself a mother, who have not so gracefully weathered the effects of aging.

Marcel himself is now an adult of at least middle age, and, as far as he is concerned, still no closer to achieving his goal of becoming a writer as he was in his youth.He has, however, started writing articles and comes to realize, as he reflects on the course of his life, that the intricate web of contacts he has made can serve as grist for his literary mill, should he decide in his waning days to take up a pen and make some contribution to letters.And, of course, over the past four thousand pages that is exactly what his author has done.Marcel muses on Time (capitalization intended), memory, and dreams as necessary elements in the creation of art, a product of so much personal pain and suffering that death can seem like a welcome reprieve.

Judging the novel as a whole now that I've finished all six volumes, I affirm that there is nothing like it, or even close to it, in literature; like "Moby Dick" or "Don Quixote" it resides in its own impenetrable legendary world of oneness.In my review of "Swann's Way," I compared Proust to Henry James, but I see now that I was way off the mark.James writes like he's throwing his weight around, imperiously demanding intellectual respect and forcing his reader into submission with his intentionally inscrutable compositions; Proust's prose, conversely, calmly and warmly invites the reader into Marcel's society and caresses him with the most delicate sensations and deepest emotions.Proust is closer to Henry Adams than he is to Henry James, but even this attempted juxtaposition is buffered by a wide margin.

Proust's style is so ornate that it is the most difficult of any writer's to describe, yet paradoxically there is nothing affected about it; he is quite possibly the most unpretentious writer in literature.He never tries to impress the reader with his erudition, even though he evidently has much, or make himself out to be something he's not; one gets the sense that what he writes is exactly what and how he thinks, as incredible as that seems.He uses humor without trying to be a comedian, sorrow without trying to be a tragedian.He is employing language simply to illustrate life and the world, and I think language has no higher calling than that.



... Read more

Product Description
Both a psychological self-portrait and a profound meditation upon the artistic process, Proust's seven-part masterpiece In Search of Lost Time changed the course of twentieth-century literature. Swann's Way, the first volume, introduces the novel's major themes and the narrator, a sensitive man drawn in his youth to fashionable society. Its focus then shifts to Charles Swann, a wealthy connoisseur who moves in high-society circles in nineteenth-century Paris and a victim of an agonizing romance. This masterly evocation of French society and its rendering of a search for a transcendental reality independent of time, ranks as a landmark of world literature. Unabridged reprint of the classic 1922 edition.
... Read more

Product Description
"The most authoritative life of Proust ever written."(Alain de Botton, Sunday Telegraph)

"A masterpiece . . . the best biography I've ever read." (Edmund White, Los Angeles Times Book Review)

Marcel Proust was arguably the greatest writer of the twentieth century. This fascinating, definitive biography by the premier world authority on Proust redefines the way we look at both the artist and the man.

A bestseller in France, where it was originally published to great critical acclaim, Jean-Yves Tadié's life of Proust makes use of a wealth of primary material only recently made available. Marcel Proust: A Life provides a scrupulously researched and engaging picture of the intellectual and social universe that fed Proust's art, along with an indispensable critical reading of the work itself. The result is authoritative, magisterial, and a beautiful example of the art of biography.Amazon.com Review
How to write the biography of a writer whose life's work was his life story? In the case of Marcel Proust, the task is complicated by the subject's own hostility to the genre; in his essay "Contre Sainte-Beuve," Proust argued that writers should be judged by their books and not by the facts of their life. Indeed, when it comes to Proust, one might well confuse the two. For the first half of his life, he traded witticisms in the salons of the belle époque; for the second he sat at home and wrote about it, going so far as to line the walls of his living room with cork in order to keep the outside world where it belonged. Eventually, all that exquisite isolation produced what is arguably the defining work of the 20th century, the loosely autobiographical, imposingly multivolumed Remembrance of Things Past. As a biographer, one can conflate the novel with the life, as Proust's first biographer, George Painter, did; or one can go the road of several recent studies, including that of William C. Carter, and emphasize instead Proust's psychology, including his "repressed" homosexuality and his complicated relationship with his Jewish ancestry. Alternately, one can address Proust as a creature of his time and his place, the product of fin-de-siècle France with all its prejudices and conventions and embroidered antimacassars.

In Marcel Proust: A Life, French critic Jean-Yves Tadie surveys these approaches from the lofty perspective of 40 years of Proust scholarship, and he chooses all--or perhaps none. For Tadie is concerned not with Proust the man but with Proust the novelist. "The true biography of a writer or an artist is that of his work," he proclaims, and goes on to present the development of Proust's life and his novel side by side, considering real-life people and events alongside the fictional representations they inspired. Thankfully, though impressively learned, Tadie is not what we would call an "academic" biographer: his prose is far too elegant and even witty for that, and he actually seems to be enjoying himself. (In cataloging the items sold by Proust's uncle's firm, for example, Tadie exclaims with contagious glee, "Is it not like reading a novel by Balzac, or the wedding announcement chapter in Albertine disparue?") Weighing in at a very Proustian 986 pages--it would make almost as good a murder weapon as Remembrance of Things Past--Tadie's work is a biography of mind-boggling thoroughness, and yet every detail strikes the reader as necessary. Suitably, this definitive work ends with a touching account of Proust's death, as the great writer dictates his masterwork until he is no longer capable of speech. Who could ask more of a biographer than Tadie's gentle and affectionate epitaph? "And we too address our respects to a man who suffered so much in order that his work should shine like the sun, now that it causes him no more harm." --Mary Park ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Masterpiece
What is the nature of biography? Is it the work of the subject? Is it separatable? What is fair? What is accurate? Does a biography of one such as Proust, the 20th century's most famous, best author, have to be a recitation of the work itself melded with events in his life? Or can the work come simply from being an artist: the culmination of the mind that is under study?

Tadie takes Proust as the person: and what he becomes is in essence what the judgment of the biographer says he becomes using his best judgment. And there appears to be no person alive with more knowledge of Proust and his work than Tadie. It is big. It is full. Almost too much. But then we are not dealing with a minor novelist, are we? This book is a classic and a model for all biography in terms of its approach and philosophy: Proust is never to be forgotten from this rendering, which is art in and of itself. For Proust, and Tadie's treatment here, is that of the nature of art itself.

Tadie disparu
I fell in love with Proust's work as a senior in college during a winter study break where we read 100s of pages a day.Later on, I satisfied part of the foreign language requirements for my Ph. D. (in English literature) by spending one day a week for an entire semester in a three person Proust seminar where we read Proust in French, but thankfully, got to hold our discussions in English.I also read Painter's 2 volume biography of Proust back then. In fact, somewhere in my garage, I have a first edition of Shattuck's "Proust's Binoculars."And, over the years, I've happily read and re-read Proust in the Moncrieff, Kilmartin/Enright, and now the new Penguin transations.

But, having read 318 pages into Tadie, I have decided to give up.Tadie is packed full of information, but he doesn't seem to have any real story to tell.It is just one potentially fascinating fact after another. But the reader has to supply all the fascination.Tadie just piles one sentence after another in an exhausting display of joyless erudition.

a panorama almost as vast as Proust's!
I concur with the reviewer who suggested that the newbie proceed as follows:

1) Read Edmund White's little Penguin biography so as to orient yourself. This will lessen the culture shock when you are first confronted with Swann's Way (or The Way by Swann's, as the English prefer).

2) Read Proust. This is actually my third perambulation, so I'm a bit unsure how much of the novel to recommend. Whatever you do, get a good start on it, sufficient that you know you will persevere.

3) Read Tadie. Much of what has mystified you in In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past, whatever) will suddenly become clear. For example, how is it that young Marcel (most writers call him the Narrator) with his wheezing and his mother complex and his odd ideas about sexuality is welcomed in the highest reaches of Paris society? Well, why not, since Proust was! People loved him, men and women, rich and poor, nobility and servants. Knowing about Proust's life makes Marcel/Narrator a lot more credible. The same is true of other characters, such as Charles Swann. (Some of Proust's characters, including the Baron Charlus and the awful Madame Verdurin, are so good that their real-life equivalents are but pale imitations. They need no biography to limn them.)

Tadie is a vast undertaking--as of course is In Search of Lost Time. I became so interested in the biography that I have put aside the final volume, Finding Time Again, so as to concentrate on the biography.

A suggestion: skip the footnotes. I began doing so at about the halfway point of the biography, and I'm enjoying it more and following it better. Those constant interruptions (it's not unusual for the footnotes to occupy a quarter or a third of the page) made it difficult for me to follow the text. Maybe Tadie has to be read three times, like the novel itself!

It's a splendid work. I've read three Proust biographies, the third one (apart from Tadie's and White's) being Marcel Proust: A Biography, by Roger Hayman (out of print). It's a better read, but it pales as a biography and as an introduction to the novel.

-- Dan Ford at readingproust dot com

What would Proust have thought?
I picked up a copy of this book when I saw it marked down in price. I did not have to read very far before I discovered why the bookstore was unable to unload the large stock they still have on hand. The writing is simply atrocious.

On every page there are non-sequiturs or convoluted sentence that are impossible to understand, even after reading them two or three times. The fault is not in the translation, which seems to be faithful to the original, but in the publisher who clearly made no attempt to edit the text properly.

How ironic that a work about one of the greatest writers of modern literature should be presented in such a careless, clumsy way.

Marcel Proust - An Intellectual Biography
Having heard much about Marcel Proust and his role in 20th century literature, several years ago I began the odyssey of reading a standard English translation of "A la recherche".There is something unsettling about reading Proust for the first time: the extravagantly-long sentences, the concentration on emotion and aesthetic experience, the depth of perception he invests in his characters, and the extended attention he pays to their everyday conversations and experiences.He can frustrate easily, but if you are able to abandon your habits from reading typical American best sellers, and allow Proust's unique approach to literature to grab hold, the rewards are enormous.There are few if any novelists like him, and you wonder as you are enveloped more and more into his world, how much of Proust's real life intruded into the life of his characters.

Jean-Yves Tadie's biography "Marcel Proust - a Life" provides the answer.So much of Proust's personal experience, and that of his acquaintances in French high society, are to be found in "A la recherche" that you cannot fully understand Proust's work without understanding Proust's life.And an everyday biography chronicling where Proust went, what he did, and who he met, would not be sufficient.What is required is a biography which explains how Proust developed his philosophy; why the aesethic experience was so vital, and sometimes so overwhelming for him; what is was that drew him to associate with the French nobility; and most importantly, what role love played in his life.Proust, after all, is the 20th century's pre-eminent chronicler of love's passion, and its destruction through jealousy.

Tadie's biography satisfies these requirements, in a way that perhaps only a French author could do.The biography traces Proust's academic career and the philosophical influences which found their way into his novels.It is well-laced with selections from Proust's letters to his mother and father, as well as to those he loved and to his friends.It provides considerable information, and occasional speculation, on the connection to the people in Proust's life with the characters in his novels.So thoroughly immersed is Tadie in Proust's life and his writings, that his biography has occasional passages which read as if Proust wrote them himself.

It is surprising to learn how well-placed Proust was in the intellectual and artistic developments of turn-of-the-century France.He knew well, or at least met, most of the famous French authors, composers, actors, and critics, and certainly did not spend his time exclusively at high-society functions.Tadie's biography illuminates these links between Proust and such famous figures as Robert de Montesquiou, Gustave Moreau, James Whistler, Camille Saint-Saens, Stephane Mallarme, Daniel Halevy, Sarah Bernhardt, Jean Cocteau, and Gabriel Faure.Yet the biography is also filled with references to hundreds of individuals unfamiliar to American readers.Some reviewers have suggested that this is a weakness; that Tadie's biography is too detailed and Franco-centric to be of value to those who don't speak French or have a solid grounding in the France of Proust's time.But if this is true of Tadie's book, it is certainly true of Proust's novels.Proust's world is so all-encompassing, and his style is so poetic and distinctive, that he creates a desire in the reader to learn French just to savor his creativity in its original power, and to visit France to see first-hand the places which excited his extraordinary descriptions.

Tadie's biography satisfyingly entwines Proust's imaginary world with Proust's real existence.He understands Proust in a way few other biographers have.His biography will be the indispensible source for anyone wishing to travel behind the characters and experiences in "A la recherche", to the life of Proust himself. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An interesting addendum to his novel
I'm going to assume that anyone interested in this book is already very familiar with, or has already read, A la reserche du temps perdu. If you have not, I would highly suggest you start with Proust's novel before moving along to insight on his thinking and/or writing. Truthfully, this book doesn't give away that much information about Proust the man, but contains a great deal on Proust the artist. Many of the essays contained within were published in the journals of the day, especially Le Figaro and La Revue Blanche, and are therefore written in a public style, carefully considered, analysing different topics from a mainly objective stance. In other words, this book documents less his private life and thoughts, which one may find in the many volumes of his correspondences, than his public, artistic life. This is worth mentioning because 'Contre Saint-Beauve' is one giant critique - an inadequate word - of the notion that an artist's biographical life is at all related to his artistic life.

'Contre Saint-Beauve' is an ethos that he developed several years earlier than his novel, though it plays a large part in the novel (and was not published until long after his death). This philosophy is partially explained in the later volumes of 'In Search Of Lost Time' when the narrator ruminates on Vinteuil's genius. Indeed, many of the characters and scene's in Proust's later novel find their early beginnings in a strange series of sketches that pop up throughout this essay. It was probably one of Proust's last stabbings at an academic or literary career, before he began his work on Swann's Way, but it proved to be very fertile ground.

Now, it's true that I originally bought this book for 'C S-B' alone, but I was very pleased to find that there were around two dozen other essays included. None of them match the length or depth of Saint-Beauve, but many of them are still very beautiful and incisive ('The Wane of Inspiration' is a particular favorite). Aside from a handful of random Proustian musings, the other essays deal with specific writers like Stendhal, Goethe and Tolstoi, or specific painters like Monet, Chardin and Rembrandt, or other such important figures of the era (even Robert de Montesquieu).

In brief, this book is definitely reserved for those who are already very familiar with 'In Search of Lost Time,' for much of the main essay is profoundly related to the novel, and much of the prose seems to be working towards the style he would later adopt. This book reveals very little of his personal life (see his theories in 'C S-B'), and stands independently as art. See Tadie for biography and Alain de Botton for general introductions. ... Read more

Product Description
Proust's great work, the major French literary statement of the 20th Century, looks back at the old social order while noting the rise of a different way of life. It is extraordinary not only in its length, but for the remarkable observations on the aspirations, the foibles and emotions of life. Once experienced, 'A La Recherche du temps Perdu' and the voice of Proust are never forgotten. This box set contains all 12 volumes, from 'Swann's Way' to 'Time Regained' and includes the biography 'The Life and Works of Proust', written and read by Neville Jason who through his recording of 'Remembrance of Things Past' for Naxos AudioBooks has become the voice of Proust for a generation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Proust Abridged?
Proust abridged is an oxymoron, isn't it? A bit like looking at a Picasso only after rearranging the facial features. What a shame.Nicely produced, but buyer beware--this is not the entire novel.

remembrance of things past
This is my all-time favorite book.The reader is excellent; he has a real feel for Proust and his writing, his diction is great--his voice and tone show that he understands the book very well and appreciates it.
I was disappointed that the book is abridged, but that's not his fault.
The book kept me alert on a recent 9-hour drive, plus return.Since I'm almost 77, I'm extremely grateful for that--and am delighted to have these wonderful CD's. ... Read more

Product Description
Including THE GUERMANTES WAY and CITIES OF THE PLAIN.Amazon.com Review
Before his death in 1922, Marcel Proust accomplished the monumentalfeat of recording Remembrance ofThings Past, a fifteen-volume literary history, much of which was basedupon his own adventures and minute observations. The Guermantes Way isan installation in this collection and recounts, among other things, hischildhood in Combray and the relevance of grasping the importance ofparticular events and people from his past in his development as a writer.Although autobiographical, Proust employs suspense and the observation ofminutiae to illustrate our own subjective existence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Remembrance of Things Past Vol II
Although it took me approx 12 years to make it to page 380 in volume I, it's now taken 2 months to finish this and volume II.There seems to be a vast difference in the tone between the two volumes:I is elegant, poetic, full of imagery (you can almost smell the flowers that he describes) and minutely detailed.Vol. II is "breezier" and in many ways, more humorous in his depictions and dialogues/conversations amongst the people that he writes about.Just as he did with M Swann and Odette, he creates full portraits of a number of individuals across all the "classes" of his society.In a way, Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities comes to mind as I am reading parts of Proust's Vol II.His style of writing, while once popular I imagine, is frustratingly gorgeous to us modern day readers, I find it a pleasant challenge and must read parts of it out loud so that I can distill the essence and thoughts as a complete.I look forward to reading Vol III to see where he takes us next and what happens to the individuals he's written about.

Proust(the revenge)
Where as Joyce's Masterpice takes place in one day proust's Masterpiece Swans Way is only the begining. In the first Part Swans way we have the world of le boheim Part 2 or Guermantes way Opens the world of the bougios. A world of the rich in which image is everything...sex, obssesion, grandmothers...ect ect.. If you are reading this then you are familar with the obsesive beatuty that is proust's writing. Equally great however, personally there is a satifaction after Swans way,(first time with Proust's writing)that make the first volume my favorite.

Continuing down the road.
Volume I of this Vintage series was a little bit overwhelming as a reading experience. Proust is dense, difficult and the diction takes quite a bit of getting used to. It was a relief for me that the reading experience got much easier by the time that I reached this volume. Nothing is going to leaven Remembrance or make it less dense, but if you make it as far as The Guermantes Way then you are bound to have come to some peace with the language.

The Guermantes Way and Cities of the Plain are full of both broad humor and deep sorrow. The treatment of the death of the Grandmother, particularly the way that she slowly retreats in dreams, is one of the most real and affecting sequences of its kind that I can remember in fiction. On the other hand, the comedy of manners at the society parties plays out like a kind of Belle Epoque Sex & the City. Proust skewers the foibles and fables of the relationships of the rich, and often left me chuckling to myself as I read.

The farther I go, the more I find these books to be one of the most memorable reading experiences of my life. Nothing in these books makes me lessen the recommendation that I read after reading Volume I. In fact, I find that my admiration is only increasing as I read.

If you can, try tackling Volume II as quickly as possible after finishing Volume I. It really helps a lot to treat Remembrance as a single book, rather than a series. It also avoids time re-learning the feeling of the Proust prose.

The Best Work of "Fiction" I've Ever Read
Moncrieff/Kilmartin's translation is still the best. Proust's life-work is the most psychologically acute novel ever written, and a perfect match between form and content. His form is the memoir, conceived as a piece of music, with themes and variations, codas and recapitulations. The content is a list of evolving concerns, from love (in all its forms) to aesthetic creation and appreciation, as well as a sort of living autopsy of the aristocracy of his time. His motives were manifold, but it seems Proust primarily wanted to get in the final word on those people he knew throughout his life, and show he both understood them (better than they themselves) and that they had little inkling of his amazing inner life. For all his encounters with and criticisms of snobs and poseurs throughout the work, and his tendency to fully absorb himself in his experiences, Marcel the narrator risks coming off as a snob himself; but quite the opposite, he denigrates himself constantly with reference to his own writing abilities, up into the very last section of "Time Regained" when the structural idea for the novel we have just read comes to him. He's disappointed many times by his own experiences, when they are is measured and conditioned by the background of his keen aesthetic imagination. His salvation is both the Idea for the novel, and a theory of time/identity which has been "calling out" to him with his famous episodes of "involuntary memory" (the most famous of which is the tea-dipped madeleine). As one reads on, there are times when it seems Proust has suspended all action and narrative in favor of impressions which resonate against one another. It may seem gratuitous or self-indulgent, but he is "performing" his theory at the same time he's telling you about it. They each have a purpose, and it seems he's trying to enact a philosophical theory of identity and experience: as if we the subject are nodes of activity that blend memory and present conscious experience.

"Remembrance of Things Past" can be a difficult work to read, but it is so very much worth it. One needs no guide to read this work; it's not as allusive as "Ulysses" nor esoteric like "Gravity's Rainbow". Proust's style is very reader-friendly (albeit he spins very long sentences). He respects the reader, and wants her to understand exactly where he's coming from, for this novel is like the map Borges once described in one of his "Ficciones": it's a representation so large and subtle and complex that it is as big as what it depicts.

If Proust were alive today, he'd probably be kibbitzing with Hollywood stars or the world's billionaire elites...And not much of this book would change!

French or Irish
It really is between joyce and proust.... ... Read more

Product Description
The third and final volume includes THE CAPTIVE, THE FUGITIVE, and TIME REGAINED. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Not a Waste at all !
Think of the series of books as a diary.It's all about his perception of things.

Kind of like the ARTHUR INMAN DIARY, but not written by a huge bigot (like Arthur Inman).

And Proust doesn't kill himself in the end.

Mike

Grokkable
Reading Marcel Proust books like : ThePast Regained , has been a delicious experience.

i especially like the sense in his novels of space and time as being deepened [in terms of their potential fora type of resonance ] by the act of contemplation : where things arecontemplated according to a sequence of precise manuevers within andoutside of the mind .

This is a theme the theologian PaulTillich also touches upon in his writings.

Thomas Wolfe, perhaps , was mistakenwhen he said : you can't go home again .

Marcel Proust teaches us that it is possible to go home again .

If we are willing to dwell on the past and contemplatewithout conflating or distortingeach of the distinct nuances of pastexperiences, we can have the experience of cosmically going home again .[We must in this process avoid the mental laziness of the pop psychologythat tells us "don't dwell on it' , "don't cling" to theinteresting experiences of the past.]

Do dwell on itshould be the message.

Worthwhile, but be prepared...
I set myself the challenge of reading this monumental work, and am still in the process of slogging through Volume 3, which I hope to finish sometime before death.The book has moments of transcendant beauty andinsight that have made it worthwhile, but also some deeply tedious sectionsthat seem to drag on endlessly. My main problem has been the exasperation Ifeel with Proust himself.It is frankly difficult at times for modernreaders to identify with this supremely self-involved aesthete of the early20th century. Often I just want to reach out and smack him and tell him toquit whining and obsessing and get on with his life, already.Currently, Iam dealing with his jealousy and need to control Albertine and herlesbianism, when I have to restrain myself from screaming "Go aheadand break up with her, you dolt!"The minute details of his emotionallife spread out over 3,000 plus pages are sometimes overwhelming. On theother hand, I have to admit that he is ruthlessly honest and makes noattempt to render himself in a glowing light, which is admirable.Andthere are occasionally those deeply profound insights into human naturethat strike a chord in everyone, along with a valuable documentation of atime and a life so unlike my own and fascinating in its own way. Take thechallenge, and good luck! ... Read more

Product Description
Celeste Albaret was Marcel Proust's housekeeper in his last years, when he retreated from the world to devote himself to his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. She could imitate his voice to perfection, and Proust himself admitted to her, "You know everything about me." Her reminiscences of her employer present a fond and winning picture of the daily life of a great writer, including his foibles, worries, and kindnesses, and Madame Albaret herself proves to be an engaging companion. 16 black-and-white photographs and drawings of the celebrated French author and his circle are included. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

How ironic that his housekeeper's memoir has become the best biography of Proust
What a love story!

In 1913, Marcel Proust's driver, Odilon Albaret, married a young woman from a small mountain village. Celeste knew no one in Paris, and her loneliness mounted. Proust suggested that she deliver copies of his new book to friends.

And so it began.

Messenger, housekeeper, confidante, friend, nurse --- until his death in 1922, Celeste Albaret spent more time with Proust than anyone else. Indeed, she spent so much more time at Proust's home than she did in her own that she and Odilon moved in. As her memoir attests, she begrudged not a minute of those hours in his service. [To buy "Monsieur Proust from Amazon, click here.]

Early on, she left Proust's apartment to go to church. "There will be plenty of time for that after I'm dead," he said. She never went to church again while he was alive. Proust --- the man and the writer --- came first. "Time contained no hours," she writes, "just a certain number of definite things to be done every day." And yet, no matter how exacting his demands, she never entered his room without a smile.

Proust, as you know, had an upside-down schedule. He awoke in an unheated, cork-lined bedroom around four in the afternoon, burned a special powder to hold his asthma at bay, then rang for coffee. In the evening, he might go out; if he did, he gave Celeste a full report on his return. And then his writing day began.....

In 1914, Proust saw Death ahead, and he decided that he had to suspend all travel and almost all socializing in order to focus on his book. With that, Celeste moved from the background of his life into sharp focus.Not only did she bring him coffee and tend to the smallest details of his life --- and Proust was a notorious micro-manager --- she got the big picture, and fast: "M. Proust's whole object, his whole great sacrifice for his work, was to set himself outside time in order to rediscover it. When there is no more time, there is silence. He needed that silence in order to hear only the voices he wanted to hear, the voices that are in his books. I didn't think about that at the time. But now when I'm alone at night and can't sleep, I seem to see him as he surely must have been in his room after I had left him -- alone too, but in his own night, working at his notebooks when, outside, the sun had long been up."

Proust liked to try out material on Celeste, and when he'd come home from a night in Society, he'd often tell her stories until dawn. These included astute descriptions of social figures. Even better, Proust made universal observations. "This is often why people are so nasty," he told Celeste. "They cannot forgive others for not being as ugly as themselves." On never going back to his childhood home: "The only place where you can regain lost paradises is in yourself." On rising in Society: "The main thing is to gain admission. After that it just builds up on its own."

"I was the privileged spectator," she writes, "of the most beautiful theater in the world."

And the most privileged assistant. It was Celeste who pasted Proust's scraps of paper --- his afterthoughts --- into the manuscript.

For all their intimacy, the relationship was always formal:

"Monsieur, why don't you call me `Celeste'? It makes me self-conscious when you call me `madame.'"
"Because, madame, I cannot."
That was that.

And yet, he admitted, "The only person I could have married is you." (In these pages, Proust is not a homosexual --- I like to think Celeste knew otherwise, but was a model of discretion. Which is entirely possible; she and her husband never gossiped about their employer.)

In every other way, this is a book of close observation, of details that, taken together, reveal character. Proust's insistence on old handkerchiefs. He brushed his teeth obsessively, but never washed with soap. He liked an occasional beer --- if brought to him from the Ritz. He wore cheap watches. He told Odilon not to buy a new taxi: "I don't want people to notice me as I go by."

You cannot read the long section on Proust's death without seeing the love story from both sides. You see it even more vividly in "Celeste," a movie Percy Adlon made about their relationship in 1981. Though filmed in Paris,everyone speaks German. No matter --- it's one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. Sadly, there's no DVD.

In his last years, Proust compared the value of his book to Celeste's. "When I am dead, your diary would sell more copies than my books," he said. Yes, if she had published it right away. But she waited 60 years. That is love.

Monsieur Marcel
'Monsieur Proust' is based on tape recorded interviews with Marcel Proust's personal assistant/chambermaid Celeste Albaret, made in the 1970's, several decades after Marcel's death. The text has (probably) been altered from the spoken word, and is very clear, consistent and readable. Celeste tells in detail about the last ten years of Proust's life, which he mostly spent in his bed, curtains blocking the light and a layer of cork shutting out noises - writing on 'À la recherche du temps perdu'. Celeste had to attend to all of Prousts routines and whims: he usually woke up late in the afternoon, ate only a croissant and some coffee and sometimes went out in the middle of the night to attend parties, and Celeste had to stay awake and let Marcel in cause he didn't use a key. As time went by the relationship between Marcel and Celeste became closer, and he became more and more dependent on her.
'Monsieur Proust' is not only about Marcels charming eccentricities. It also gives a glimpse of Paris in the late 1910's, and some insight into Proust as a writer, the relationship between his writing and memory and the demise of the old society. And the debacle between Proust and Gallimard and Gide when 'Du côté de chez Swann' was first refused (something Proust made them regret).
Also, Celeste criticizes some of the established views of Proust given by other commentators, his homosexuality for instance. I don't know how trusted Celeste can be as a narrator, and what may be additions made by the publisher, but 'Monsieur Proust' is a very captivating read.

Intimate Portrayal of Proust
If you're a writer, you can't help but feel curious about the habits of other writers -- particularly the great ones, the writers you admire. How and when did they work? How did they accomplish their masterpieces? Of course, a cross-section of famous writers only demonstrates that there is no one way of working. Hemingway got up at dawn and wrote until lunch or so. Kafka had supper late in the evening and then began to write after ten or eleven o'clock, when everyone else was going to bed. Evidently day is as good as night, if you have talent and the will to write.

One of the more unusual schedules had to be that of Marcel Proust. Unlike Kafka, who wrote at night even though he had to get up in the morning to go to the insurance firm where he worked, Proust was a man of independent means and was thus able to maintain as irregular a schedule as he liked. Or rather, his schedule was highly regularized, it just wasn't exactly "normal." Typically, Proust woke up around four in the afternoon -- if he even really slept that much, which is an open question. Upon awakening, he would "smoke," which was his term for a fumigation process meant to relieve his asthma. Afterward he would drink one or sometimes two cups of cafe au lait prepared according to very stringent requirements. Sometimes he would eat a croissant, sometimes not. If he were staying home for the evening, as he often did in the years he was writing A la Recherche du temps perdu, he might begin work right after this "breakfast." If he was going out, he might not return until the middle of the night. Arriving home at, say, three in the morning, he might spend a few hours telling his chambermaid all about his evening -- and then, at perhaps six in the morning, after having been up all night, he would begin to write. What's more, he always wrote in bed. It really gives new meaning, when you consider this, to the famous opening line of his masterwork: "Longtemps je me suis couche de bonne heure." For a long time I went to bed early -- this was written by a man lying in bed after having been up all night.

The chambermaid who was Proust's nocturnal confidante during the last decade of his life -- precisely when he was writing his masterwork -- outlived him by more than sixty years. (Proust died in 1922, Ms. Albaret in 1984). For the bulk of those years, she maintained a strict silence about her former employer, honoring Proust's own sense of privacy. But finally, late in life, she felt the need to set the record straight and thus agreed to be interviewed for this "as told to" memoir. This is fortunate for fans of Proust, and for fans of literature in general, for her memoir is as intimate a portrait as you can find of any writer. It is the kind of view you produce of a person whom you love, respect, admire, but also serve in the most minute and detailed capacities. You can practically smell Proust's underwear in this book -- which is not to say that it's a lurid tell-all, because it isn't. Ms. Albaret seemed only too content to keep Proust's underwear perfectly clean.

Too clean, some critics have said. And it is true that Ms. Albaret flatly denies Proust's homosexuality. She admits he went to a certain male brothel, but only -- in her view -- to gather information for his book. Otherwise, if he had any trysts during her decade with him, she didn't see them, or didn't want to. But then again, so what? Do you really have to look for stains in the man's underwear? In comparison to all the vanguard writers who were absolute jerks, it comes as something of a relief to read of a writer who comes off as a sweet, generous, nostalgic, insightful man.

Not that Proust didn't have his eccentricities, because certainly he did: his nocturnal schedule, abstemious diet, the cork walls lining his bedroom to prevent noise, the curtains closed to keep out the sunlight. It can almost be harrowing to read of Ms. Albaret's indoctrination into Proust's neurotic universe, and yet at the same time you can recognize that this controlled climate was necessary to enable Proust to recreate the splendid universe of memories in his book. Ms. Albaret says it best herself:

"Now I realize M. Proust's whole object, his whole great sacrifice for his work, was to set himself outside time in order to rediscover it. When there is no more time, there is silence. He needed that silence in order to hear only the voices he wanted to hear, the voices that are in his books. I didn't think about that at the time. But now when I'm alone at night and can't sleep, I seem to see him as he surely must have been in his room after I had left him -- alone too, but in his own night, working at his notebooks when, outside, the sun had long been up."

And perhaps that is also the truest thing anyone can really say of a writer's schedule. Hemingway's dawn, Kafka's evening, Proust's night -- what they all have in common is their own internal rhythm, a private sequence of sun and moon. It was Proust's thesis that writing could recover time lost in reality, and yet the unspoken irony is that in reality you also lose time just in order to write.

The woman who knew and loved Proust best
The pleasure of memoirs is that for all that they allow a circumscribed vision of things they tend to offer coherent narratives of the past, and let you know "what it was like." This famous memoir by Celeste Albaret, Proust's housekeeper for ten years while he was writing his masterpeice, gives us thus a better and more complete view of the writer during his most productive years than could be imagined otherwise. Albaret was not a writer herself--the memoir was composed by others who shaped her oral reminiscences--but this work is beautifully shaped, and flows wonderfully. Almost all the major questions anyone would have about Proust--how he wrote, what he was like, who the bases were for the characters in his novel, and what his relations with his family were like--are answered in due course, and though Albaret retains her biases (she refuses to give much credence to his affairs with his chauffeur and others, for example) she is still as honest as can be. It's clear that she considered knowing and working for Proust the great event of her life, and she feels bound to tell as much as what she saw as she can. ... Read more

Product Description

The acclaimed adaptation continues. Swann is a frequent guest of the high society soirees at the end of the 19th century. When he first encounters Odette de Crecy, he feels no attraction to this frivolous and superficial young woman but time has it otherwise and soon, she becomes an obsession…

"Heuet`s project continues as a successful venture. The narrative that unfolds is self-contained enough that readers new to the series will be able to embark on a tale with a compelling cast of characters and a satisfying beginning, middle and end within these covers."-School Library Journal

Product Description
The first four volumes of Proust's masterpiece in a single file, in the original French. Du côté de chez Swann, 1913; A L'Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs, 1919 ; Le Côté de Guermantes, 1920-1921; and Sodome et Gommorrhe, 1921-1922. According to Wikipedia: "Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust(10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, essayist, and critic, best known as the author of À la recherche du temps perdu (in English, In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past), a monumental work of twentieth-century fiction published in seven parts from 1913 to 1927... Begun in 1909, À la recherche du temps perdu consists of seven volumes spanning some 3,200 pages and teeming with more than 2,000 literary characters. Graham Greene called Proust the "greatest novelist of the 20th century", and W. Somerset Maugham called the novel the "greatest fiction to date." Proust died before he was able to complete his revision of the drafts and proofs of the final volumes, the last three of which were published posthumously and edited by his brother, Robert."
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Proust, portable, and at this price?
Love it.I have the Pleiade 4-vol, and 2 of the 3 3-vol edition (one is sadly lost), but having this Kindle edition in my pocketbook saved my sanity at a couple of moments on airplanes and on a long land voyage. ... Read more

Product Description
A captivating, colorful examination of the ways in which Proust incorporated artists and the visual arts in his work.À la recherche du temps perduby Marcel Proust is one of the most profoundly visual works in Westernliterature. Not only are there frequent references to specific works ofart, notably during the narrator's visits to Venice and in hisevaluations of the style of the imaginary painter Elstir, but certaincharacters are also evoked by comparison to particular paintings. Bloch'sappearance as a boy is likened to the portrait of Mohammed II byGentile Bellini; Odette de Crécy strikes Swann by her resemblance to afigure in a Botticelli fresco. Even the lesser figure of a certain Mme.Blattin becomes the subject of Proustian mischief by being described as"exactly the portrait of Savonarola by Fra Bartolomeo." EricKarpeles has identified and located the many paintings to which Proustmakes reference; in other cases, where only a painter's name ismentioned to indicate a certain style or appearance, Karpeles has chosena representative work to illustrate the impression that Proust soughtto evoke.

With some 200 paintings beautifully reproduced in fullcolor and texts drawn from the Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright translation,as well as concise commentaries on the novel's evolving story, this bookis an essential addition to the libraries of Proustians everywhere. Thebook also includes an authoritative introduction examining the variousways in which Proust used paintings and the arts to extend hisdescriptive vocabulary, and a comprehensive index of artists andpaintings mentioned in the novel. 200 full-color paintings ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Paintings in Proust
Great guide to the paintings in Proust - thus the name. Highly recommended for readers of the Master.

Quality of Reproductions
To the general praise for this wonderful book, I want only to add that the illustrations are of unusually high quality.They almost glow, so careful the author was.To take just one instance, the "little patch of yellow wall" that Elstir remembers as he is dying, from Vermeer's View of Delft, is vibrant, far more so than in many Vermeer reproductions.

Wonderful companion to Proust
I am halfway through reading the In Search for the Lost Time books, and am using this book as a side reference. It'ts a wonderful work, that brings life to the works of art referenced in Proust's books.

The chapters are divided according to the books, and you advance in this book as your reading of the "Search" progresses. Everytime Proust writes about a painting (or sculpture), the quote is transcribed and a nice full page reproduction is presented.

A gem, indispensible for Proust lovers and for first-time readers like me.

Lost no more
Karpeles incisive work makes this classic come alive and more meaningful than one could imagine.

paintings in proust
Wonderful publication and a great companion to Proust's novel. Nicely produced, good quality reproductions, and restrained text. Eric Karpeles lets you enjoy the paintings, and make the links to Proust without intruding. This is a book to treasure. ... Read more

Product Description
The Cambridge Companion to Proust provides a broad account of the major features of Marcel Proust's great work A la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927). The specially commissioned essays, by acknowledged experts on Proust, address a wide range of issues relating to his work. Progressing from background and biographical material, the chapters investigate such essential areas as the composition of the novel, its social dimension, the language in which it is couched, its intellectual parameters and its humor. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

essential
This book is essential reading for those new to Proust, as I am. The variety of topics ranges from Proust's life, to his writing style (including, believe it or not, his brevity), to the period of French cultural history in which the novel is set. I cannot imagine reading Search for Lost Time without this kind of preparation.

Slightly uneven, but overall a solid introduction to Proust
This is an excellent and helpful introductory set of essays by leading Anglo-American Proust scholars that will prepare any beginner for working his or her way through Proust's masterpiece.As in any anthology, some of the essays are more rewarding than others.Many of the pieces provide a stellar introduction to Proust and Proust's world, while some (especially some of the later essays in the volume) are as impenetrable as some of Proust's own longer and unfathomable sentences.Nonetheless, anyone unfamiliar with Proust will come away well prepared to read and study Proust's masterpiece.A word of warning:if it is important to you not to know plot details (though Proust is hardly about plot; it isn't the destination in Proust, it is the getting there that counts) before reading a book, then you might want to consider skipping this.Personally, I believe that Proust is one of those rare authors about whose tale one needs to know as much as possible before reading.

The volume is apt to be of less value to Proust scholars, or even serious readers who have read the biographies by either Carter or Tadie, or the critical works of Roger Shattuck, or others (both Carter and Shattuck have essays in this volume).The best essays in the collection tend to be those that are more introductory in nature.The weaker essays tend to be those that are more specialized and focused on specific issues in Proust.

Overall, however, I encourage anyone needing an introductory work on Proust to consider spending some time working through the essays in this book. ... Read more

Product Description
Send a thoughtful greeting with these note cards that celebrate the literary world of Marcel Proust. Featuring inspiring quotes from the renowned author, this set of note cards also includes gorgeously collaged imager from turn-of-the-century France, making each card as memorable as a madeleine dipped in tea. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Time's Lost and Found...
Marcel Proust's classic work, was first translated into English by C.K. Scott Moncrieff, with a title, "Remembrance of Things Past," which is somewhat askew, from the literal translation of "In Search of Lost Time," particularly from the passive in English to the active verb in French. It is one of the most praised and least read literary masterpieces.Least read for a reason: it is one of the longest works, at 3,000 plus pages, and furthermore, much of the book concerns the arcane machinations of social climbers in the Parisian literary salons; a scene that has largely changed, at least by dropping the royalty monikers from today's "power brokers." So, if you are not reading and commenting on the book to promote your academic career, what is the point?

As the current only other reviewer says, you have to be interested. And fortunately for me, there were those aspects of Proust's work that provided the hook. The other reviewer also said it is essential to have read some of Proust before tackling this biography, and I hardily agree. I've read "Swann's Way," only roughly a sixth of the overall work, but it provided sufficient motivation to read all of Painter's 700 pages on Proust, even enough to struggle through the machinations in those Parisian salons. There is no question that Painter has conducted meticulous research, and has combined that with fluid prose to present what will almost certainly be the most authoritative biography of Proust. He had sufficient distance from his subject, completing it in 1959, almost 40 years after Proust's death, and has provided one more preface to this edition, 30 years later. He says of Proust's magnum opus that it is: "... the allegory of Proust's life, a work not of fiction but of imagination interpreting reality."

Painter's own erudition repeatedly shines through in this work. Proust, though he did not have the English language skills, undertook to translate Ruskin's "The Bible of Amiens" into French. In this section Painter reminds us of a Ruskin doctrine: "reading is valuable because it is a conversation with men far wiser and more interesting than those we have the opportunity to meet in everyday life." Later, Painter quotes from a letter that Proust wrote, quoting Pascal, saying: "that all the misfortunes of man spring from his inability to live in a room alone!" Painter found an article written by a mathematician, Camille Vettard, entitled "Proust et Einstein." When Cremiux pointed out some anachronisms in "Le Cote de Guermantes," Proust wryly replied: "that they were due to the flattened form my characters take owing to their rotation in time." Proust was homosexual, one of the first novelist to openly proclaim this, and Painter says that the longest sentence he ever wrote, some 1500 words, was his confession of his homosexuality.Proust's father was a famous physician, one that promoted the idea of a "cordon sanitaire" that would effectively stop the spread of cholera. However, as Painter reports: "But the mingled admiration and contempt with which Proust treats the medical profession in "A la Recherche" is doubtless in part a reflection of his own feelings towards his father." The above are only just a small sampling of the rich observations and takeaways that this book provides.
And the indispensable hook? As for many others, it is the remembrance of the tea and the madeleine, triggered by the tingling of the bell, a metaphor for any event that might suddenly bring back an essential childhood memory. Furthermore, it is the walks taken after supper, in the long evenings of a northern French summer, which denote a simpler era, of more basic past times (in both senses). We would periodically rent a gite near Illiers-Combray (Illiers, the real town, assumed the hyphenated name, appending the fictional Combray from Proust's novel), and drive the 12 km to the town. It is still possible to take the tour, see the bedroom where he was a boy, and called to his mother for a goodnight kiss, and hear the bell's tingle. But mainly, I enjoyed the after-dinner walk, the Swann's way one, pass the public laundry tubs, to the Pre-Catalan garden, with its pond. Each time we undertook this walk, we were the only ones in the garden, one that infused the spirit with feelings of serenity. It was as if we too were able to recover a lost time.

Painting Proust
I feel obliged to preface any comments on Painter's biography with a cautionary word. Reading this book without having read Proust's masterpiece A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, is like reading a history of Jazz, without having heard any.

That said, and disregarding Painter's introductory thesis that "Proust's novel cannot be fully undersood without a knowledge of his life", the life and times of Proust is a fascinating subject in itself. His genius for conversation, and the legacy it created for him, gives his biographer plenty to work with and Painter's skill as a writer comes to the fore as he recreates the events that shaped Proust's life.

The biography is written sequentially, beginning with a brief overview of late 19th century Paris, and culminating in Proust's death while still revising his masterpiece, in November 1922.

Footnotes a plenty, Painter avoids mythologising Proust and instead, sticks to the facts with an academic's eye for detail. He occasionally offers revealing insights into Proust's work and writes in a curious style which draws on Proust's own language and favourite metaphors. In the end though, Painter's raison d'etre is to identify the people and places that shaped Proust's writing. To this end, we meet the Barons, Dukes and Duchesses who populated the upper stratosphere of Parisian society in the early nineteen hundreds, and visit the small gardens of Illiers and Auteuil, which would eventually become the Combray of his famous novel.

Not interested? Well this book is not for you. For those of you who are interested in knowing from where Proust's inspiration sprang, there is no better book.

One for the fans.

Painting Proust
I feel obliged to preface any comments on Painter's biography with a cautionary word. Reading this book without having read Proust's masterpiece A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, is like reading a history of Jazz, without having heard any.

That said, and disregarding Painter's introductory thesis that "Proust's novel cannot be fully undersood without a knowledge of his life", the life and times of Proust is a fascinating subject in itself. His genius for conversation, and the legacy it created for him, gives his biographer plenty to work with and Painter's skill as a writer comes to the fore as he recreates the events that shaped Proust's life.

The biography is written sequentially, beginning with a brief overview of late 17th centuary Paris, and culminating in Proust's death while still revising his masterpiece, in November 1922.

Footnotes a plenty, Painter avoids mythologising Proust and instead, sticks to the facts with an academic's eye for detail. He occasionally offers incisive insights into Proust's work and writes in a curious style which draws on Proust's own language and favourite metaphors. In the end though, Painter's raison d'etre is to identify the people and places that shaped Proust's writing. To this end, we meet the Barons, Dukes and Duchesses who populated the upper stratosphere of Parisian society in the early nineteen hundreds, and visit the small gardens of Illiers and Auteuil, which would eventually become the Combray of his famous novel, and marvel at the chuch spires he visited while reading Ruskin.

Not inerested? Well this book is not for you. For those of you who are interested in knowing from where Proust's inspiration sprang, there is no better book.

One for the fans. ... Read more