William Carter claims in the preface to this biography that his goal is "to understand, as well as one reasonably can, how Marcel Proust, generally considered by his peers a talented but frivolous dilettante, came to produce what is arguably the most brilliant sustained prose narrative in the history of literature." Fortunately, this is not his goal at all. Professor Carter knows better than to attempt any such thing.

About four months before his death, we read, a letter from one of his first English fans infuriated Proust. Sydney Schiff had endorsed the anti-Proustian idea that when one knows someone, there is no need to read a book by that person. Nonsense, Proust replied: "Between what a person says and what he extracts through meditation from the depths of where the integral spirit lies covered with veils, there is a world." (p. 784)

Some superficial spirit must in a weak moment have seized Professor Carter's pen when he came to write his preface, for his fascinating and enjoyable volume implicitly disavows the ambition to explain how Proust achieved his masterpiece. What Carter does instead is to recount, based on what records remain and in a simple and unornamented narrative style, the facts of Proust's life from month to month. Though we do not really feel that we come close to the heart of Proust's mystery as an artist, we do now and then get an idea of what it must have been like to know Proust, and be known by him.

Carter captures the essence of Proust. This is a "must" read for anyone who is truly serious about "little Marcel." Fascinating! Will actually stimulate me to go back and charge through Remembrance of Things Past once again.

Having read George Painter's two-volume biography of Proust many years ago, I might be unfair in comparing it to Carter's new biography, but my impression is that Carter has vastly outdone Painter. He has managed to write a very detailed, yet quite readable and engrossing biography of Proust. I think that conflating Proust and the narrator of "A la recherche..." has tended to diminish the author's genius, as if he had merely written a fascinating autobiography. Carter confirms Proust as a novelist, not a memoirist. Certainly, he helps the reader understand who may have inspired Proust's characters, but makes clear that Proust's imagination was the main engine behind the world he created. Some readers might be disappointed that there isn't more literary analysis of "La Recherche" in this biography, but Carter is adept at presenting passages from the novel that are representative of its genius and beauty. I'd also like to mention that the book is physically attractive, with a handsome typeface, and that there are very few typos and grammatical errors.

By the time I reached this final volume of Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" I was exhausted. I had steadfastly followed the advice given in my college French Literature course: I would go into a quiet room with no distractions and loose myself in the beauty of the language and the images.

I did find myself referring to this final volume frequently while reading the others. The "Guide to Proust" is a great tool for remaining focused and maintaining the unity of the work.

While I am no scholar, I can say that I do appreciate Kilmartin's Translation. The language is beautiful and musical. As with any masterpiece, the original is beyond compare.

"A la recherche du temps perdu" begins with the word "longtemps" ("For a long time") and ends several thousand pages later with the word "temps" ("Time"). How's that for unity!

The lists of characters, and of persons and places referred to, at the end are useful even if you are planning to read A La Recherche from page one, so I'd recommend buying this volume first. I am lost in admiration of the immense task of the translators but some comments are in order. They had the problem of translating slang and mispronunciations and the translations of these are often based on British usage of the 1920's. Scott Moncrieff dealt with some of them by leaving them in French. He had a style that was slightly archaic, even for his time (see his translation of the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, where he left the dirty bits in Latin). Some of the translations are in British English, with expressions such as "lift boy" and "bowler-hatted" that might need translation of the translation, although I suspect that the sort of people reading Proust and reading a review like this are anglophile as well as francophile.

Time Regained is the splendid payoff of Proust's plot development, so carefully built up over the course of the
preceding six volumes of his novel. It is here that it all comes together, and he integrates his concept of involuntary memory with time and creativity, demonstrating the joy of escaping
the coils of time to relive the past unencumbered by the accumulated intervening thoughts and feelings. This liberation
enables creativity and suggests metaphors. He describes how this has inspired his vocation, his dedication to writing the book you have been reading, and hands to the reader the same gift of regaining time.

Genette is one of the biggest-names in stylistic literary criticism around. One would imagine that this means his works are read far and wide, though this is not always the case.

Narrative Discourse samples essays from Figures III, Genette's most well read collection of essays. The theme of all of the essays is structure and presentation in the narrative, itself a topic which has only recieved a high place in the study of narrative in recent history. This collection gives the reader the basics of Genette's own view of narrative, but stands itself incomplete without criticism (which is presented and answered in Narrative Discourse Revisited).

Genette's ideas besides, this volume is difficult reading for the simple reason that information is not easily locatable and one is required to sift through the beach to find a sand dune: in other words, a person does ALL the work even if you want to double check the meaning of a single major term. This is another reason to get Narrative Discourse Revisited, where Genette actually explains in simple, straitforward terms his own ideas on narrative.

One unfortunate note on the translation is the original terms as they appeared in French are not included in the text. Instead, terms were applied which seem to add more confusion that clarity, such as the term recit in French being simply translated as narrative and histore translated as "story", neither of which are very accurate considering their respective english meaning.

In short, if you are going to buy this buy the other as well. It will save a lot of headaches in the end.

I have only half finished this book and that is what kept my review from appearing a few days ago: Like an anal Proustian, I repented. However, upon looking through the antiquated, anachronistic, farcical profiles of Proust on the cover of his dated translations I was at the same time shopping for some audio tapes of him with the covers of the translations insinuating the eye of an omniprescent narrator. Given the fact that this book was -by no fault of the author(I mean here Genette) - profiled with that english visage I can't help but to say a few things; namely, that it is worth the headache: Anybody who has labored through to the point of "The Captive" deserves some expanded temporal explanation, and if it means using flashcards for the weird french words, so be it. Proust is not only a long read but a second and (let's face it) a third read.

Temporality, or simply time versus narrative, seems to me the main theme of Genette's great book and it is well worth reading. The only suggestions I would and really could be able to give is to someone who has chosen to read other forms of literature instead of this kind; and that he should make haste to read the Odyssey or its cliff notes and additionally a couple of Balzac novels before taking this particular book on. I have read some Balzac, and I feel remarkably safe in saying that LOST ILLUSIIONS would be enough if one doesn't want to bore oneself with things one doesn't like. I don't think it necessary to read through, for example, Cousin Betty or Old Goriot, both of which, in my view, fall very below any valid proustian juxtaposions and would almost be better consigned to the realm of Jane Austen in comparison to the modern novel. However, I haven't read Madame Bovary, which is apparently a turning point in literature along with Tolsoy and Maussapant(?) and I can sense this while reading this book; there is for me a palpable gap - a real sense of missing something.

Yet in the end one has to choose, and I guess in my case I ellec an apparently indispensable classic: IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME. Genette draws on many sources. (Yet he can choose whomsoever he wants. The endings of Lermantov's great "A Hero of our time" or Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground" could just as easily fit in for a missing scene in a James novel by perhaps replacing some mode of comparison. Why not, really, use that extremely weird scene in Juan Ruiz's "Book of Good Love, where the archpriest, for no "Elliptical" reason whatsoever, disappears into a "nothingness" as "idiosynchratic" (if "nothingness, so to speak, could become "Idiosynchratic") as any modern novel,(the narrator just disappears!) perhaps admittedly due to its "contrariwise" ordinariness or whatever.

The book may be burdensome, but so is a lot of Proust. I would say anyone would agree that many parts of "The Fugitive" and "The Captive" are pretty wearisome, and actually make a laugh feast of even the most abstruse Robbet-grillet novels.

This book presents a succinct "psychological anatomy" of proustian time, and that is obviously something very important in Proust, even though my professor stated that Proust is accessible. After reading this book, and considering the STAKES, what is truly accessible? One thing that is accessible is a cunning and clever writers' gift to impart his spadework and wisdow unto those who either don't have the time or - why not admit it? - temporal fortitude to survy every ravine Marcel Proust indeed seemed to plant.

And as far as content goes, for my money, Genette need not even address it - we have Proust for that. It is Proust's intentional or unintentional modes of recollection that may be,- as Genette suggests here,- as important as philosophy, fiction, reality, history, emotions, or what have you. I think this book is worth the headache for anyone who has read the first four books (up to The Captive) once because on the necessary secondary and againin perhaps third reading many very basic, important and proustian modes of thought are brought to light, sometimes glaringly so.

This book should be required reading for anyone who wants to look seriously at narrative theory. Genette's analysis of the construction of time in narrative discourse is the still the model for theorists writing since then. Such categories as order, frequency, and duration in the narrative presentation of story-time show how narrative decisions on the part of authors can have dramatically different rhetorical effects. Genette views these narrative strategies as a form of rhetorical figuration and gives them terms drawn from classical rhetoric (e.g., "prolepsis" for a flashing forward, "analepsis" for a flashback). Genette's work is one of the clearest of all the French theorists of the 1970s and 1980s who became popular among literary critics and theorists in the US. His work is easily the most empirical of his academic geration of French theorists and perhaps the most likely to be useful in generations to come.

Proust by Edmund White is really good but the other one How Proust can Change Your Life was funnier, though I know that it was a different genre altogether. White has been accused of "homosexualising" Proust, in fact I think it is relevant, since others have always "de-homosexualised" Proust and his many affairs. White has been quite proud of his status as a gay writer and that does not limit him, only that the rather short biography sometimes lapses into an account of his failed affairs, sometimes with straight younger men. However, I cannot forget that moving passage in which Proust immortalized his Italian lover, Alfred Agostinelli who died of a plane crash. Though the affair was largely unrequitted, Proust spoke of it with great passion in the book. White's accounts weave back and forth from Proust's life and works, to a point they are linked seamlessly. I also like the rather passionate conclusions where White comments on love as seen by Proust, and one knows that the writer is intense and involved in his affair with Proust!

Although there is no shortage of books on Proust in English, and no shortage of enormously long biographies, there is a surprising lack of short biographies. Luckily, this excellent little volume by Edmund White fills a major need. While we have major long biographies like those of Painter, Tadie, and Carter, these may not be appropriate for someone wanting a brief overview. The trick with any biography of Proust is striking a balance between writing about Proust's life and Proust's art, not an easy task given the degree with which Proust based his work on events in his own life. It is virtually impossible to disentangle the two.

This is a short book (around 150 pages), but in that brief span, White is able to touch on all the major events of Proust's life, the key relationships of his life, the major themes of his work as an author, and the ways in which Proust's life became the basis for his work. If one is unfamiliar with Proust before picking up this book, one will gain a first rate overview of him before setting it down. One thing that tremendously enhances the value of the book is an excellent annotated biography that gives a great overview of work on Proust both in English and French.

White, who is a well known gay author, does a superb job writing about the myriad of contradictions in Proust's own work as a lightly closeted gay author. Although Proust's being gay is the worst kept secret of the century, Proust fought many duels over accusations that he was homosexual (or, an invert, as Proust would have put it). Proust was the first writer to write extensively about homosexuality, both male and female, but maintained a façade of heterosexuality to those who did not know him well.

All in all, this is an excellent brief biography of the man many regard as the great novelist of the 20th century. I heartily recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about Proust.

Edmund White, one of my favorite contemporary American Authors, manages to capture the life of Marcel Proust in a manner that grabs the reader's attention. The book is a short appraisal of Proust's life, with a refreshing focus on Proust's barely in-the-closet homosexuality. The illuminating look at Proust's psyche and private relationships provide a different way of interpreting his masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past. This easy-to-read biography comes highly recommended.

...and i have not even finished even the first volume of this dauntingly sprawling work known as a la recherche du temps perdu, but i know what i like and i have just fallen in love with swann's way. yes, it would be silly to deny that proust does like to go on and on quite prodigiously but what a sumptuous journey! i feel almost wicked indulging in proust - and what is his writing if not supremely self-indulgent - but i find myself continually redeemed by his carefully and extensively detailed insights which unfold and arise so naturally, almost indiscernibly, from the complex interplay of memory, sensation and emotion. as i read, often i find myself either smiling with joy or on the verge of tears, moved by the beauty with which proust reveals simple, almost mundane, truths, which are all the more profound by virtue of their mundanity. in any case, i don't think it's fair to banish so bitterly all those for whom this book is a thing of joy and pleasure to the realm of the pretentious. besides, i prefer to think of myself as voluptuous, not pretentious (sniff, sniff) here's a tip: forget profundity if you must and just revel in the gorgeous details of his recollections, his attempts to recapture the past through memory. this is not a book to rush, you must let it's luxuriant and gauzy veil envelop you.

Proust is one of my very favortite authors. "Swann's Way," the first book of A la recherche du temps perdu, is perhaps the most accessible and lyrical of the seven. Written in a hypnotic and mesmerizing style, "Swann's Way" begins by recreating life in a fictionalized 19th century French village, complete with gossipy aunts, church festivals and priests who "know too much."

"Swann's Way" is also the volume in which Proust tastes the divine madeleine then goes on to link memory to memory to memory. Even the smallest detail is not overlooked: sights, sounds, smells, textures, the interplay of light and shadow; everything was a source of joy and connection for Proust and he records those connections in this fascinating book. While Joyce lived in the world of the present, Proust lived in the world of the past.

So many people complain about the lack of plot in this book. But do we really need a plot in every book we read? Aren't some works of art beautiful enough to be read, or listened to or gazed upon for their beauty alone? Is anything truly "art for art's sake?" If your answer to this question is "Yes," then "Swann's Way" might be a book you'll come to treasure. Yes, it is dense and yes, it does take quite a bit of time to read, but it is time well spent and time that will never be forgotten.

"Swann's Way" sets the tone for all the volumes that follow. Indeed, the final section of the final book is but an echo of the first section of "Swann's Way." Although Proust may have seemed to be wandering, he was not; A la recherche du temps perdu is one of the most structured works in any language. The fact that this structure is not immediately discernable is only further proof of the genius of Proust.

The section, Swann in Love, is typical of Proust's obsession with repetition. Each time the tortured Swann meets Odette, he must re-enact the very first ritual of the cattleyas. They even come to speak of this as "doing a cattleya." The Swann in Love section also showcases Proust's wicked sense of humor, for Swann is both a character of high comedy and high tragedy, and Proust dissects French society in a most deliciously scathing manner.

While it may be Proust's reputation that causes us to pick up this book, it is his prose that keeps us reading. Almost indescribable, it is luminous, poetic, magical, fascinating, ephemeral, gossamer, mesmerizing, elegant and, of course, sublime.

I realize that "Swann's Way" is definitely not going to be a book for everyone. But those who love and appreciate fine literature and beautiful, crystalline prose, may find that "Swann's Way" will become nothing less than a lifetime treasure.

I wish I hadn't waited so long to experience Proust, for now having read "Swann's Way," I see that his deeply sensitive prose is a reference point for almost all of the introspective literature of the twentieth century. As the story of a boy's adolescent conscience and aspirations to become a writer, the book's only artistic peer is James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man."

The narrator is presumably the young Marcel Proust who divides his recollections between his boyhood at his family's country house at Combray and his parents' friend Charles Swann, an art connoisseur. In fact, the path that passes Swann's house, being one of two ways the narrator's family likes to take when they go for walks, gives the book its title. Proust uses the theme of unrequited love to draw a parallel between his young narrator's infatuation with Swann's red-haired daughter Gilberte and Swann's turbulent affair with a woman named Odette de Crecy.

Intense romantic obsessions are a Proustian forte. Swann falls for Odette even though she is unsophisticated and frivolous and does not appear to love him nearly as much as he loves her. He is desperate for her, always sending her gifts, giving her money when she needs it, and hoping she will become dependent on him. It comes as no surprise that he is consumed with jealousy when he notices her spending time with his romantic rival, the snobbish Comte de Forcheville, and he is shocked by her lesbian tendencies and rumors of her prostitution. He finally realizes with chagrin that he has wasted years of his life pursuing a woman who wasn't his "type" -- but even this resignation is not yet the conclusion of their relationship.

Proust's extraordinary sensitivity allows him to explore uncommon areas of poignancy, perversity, and the human condition. One example is the young narrator's childish insistence on getting a goodnight kiss from his mother at the cost of wresting her attention away from the visiting Swann. Another remarkable instance is the scene in which a girl's female lover spits on the photograph of the girl's deceased father in disrespectful defiance of his wishes for his daughter's decency. And I myself identified with Legrandin, the engineer whose passion for literature and art grants his professional career no advantages but makes him an excellent conversationalist.

Few writers can claim Proust's level of elegance and imagery. The long and convoluted sentences, with multiple subordinate clauses tangled together like tendrils of ivy, remind me of Henry James; but Proust is much warmer and more intimate although admittedly he is just as difficult to read. The narration of "Swann's Way" is a loosely connected flow of thoughts which go off on tangents to introduce new ideas and scenes; the effect is similar to wandering through a gallery of Impressionist paintings. And, as though channeling Monet literarily, Proust displays a very poetical understanding of and communication with nature, infusing his text with pastoral motifs and floral metaphors that suggest the world is always in bloom.

This is a good Agatha Christie style mystery, though I was able to correctly determine the guilty party halfway through the book (something I fail to do when reading Poirot...so this should provide for you a good gauge of the book's mystique). What is remarkable about this book, and what I think was omitted above in the reviews, is that it was written by the real life editor of The Friends of Marcel Proust and Combray society's bulletin, Elyane Dezon-Jones. Her descriptions of Proust's home make you feel like you are really there. When this book was first published, in French, it caused a stir amoung the Society's members, most notably with association's real life Secretary. Can you guess who the book's first murder victim was...?

A reviewer wrote- "I'ts hard to imagine how Proust can change your life if you don't actually read Proust". That is true, but then on the other hand, never, while reading this book, did I get the impression that Alain de Botton was trying to replace Proust. I don't think he was trying to offer a guide to Proust, nor trying to write literary criticism or anything like that: After finishing the book, the impression I got was that this is more a self-help book (and quite a witty and funny one, actually, much better than the usual saccharine-sweet self help books) and less a book about Proust. The good thing is that "How Proust can change your life" will probably give you an appetite for more Marcel Proust...and that has to do with the clarity and lightness of touch with which de Botton writes: you can't resist his admiration for Proust, even though you might have objections to the way he chose to express this admiration: but then who says that books about philosophy or about literature have to be dead serious and heavy? I think Alain de Botton has written an original book, a book that's a kind of experiment, as it combines self-help insights with good literature and important ideas. If you read this as such, as an interesting experiment which may bring more people to Proust, then you won't really be able to find any fault in the book.

Then, as a chocolate truffle comes at the end of a seven course meal and threatens to dissolve the wonders of all the complexities of taste that had come previously to the pallate, came Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life--for, having been introduced to Proust, like M. Botton, at an early age, perhaps too early to appreciate it to the fullest degree possible, yet grateful for the experience, I had taken the full meal before the truffle--and I was filled with a sense of new taste, and new desires for old tastes; yet I also marvelled how the book remained light, well-informed of but unburdened by the labyrinthine Proustian sentence structure and syntax (which is featured on a particular page containing the longest sentence in literature--Proust's, of course); and I found new clarity in all my emotions, especially in how much I hated James Joyce, all through the instruction of this book; which I must admit is far better if you have taken the year off and read In Search of Lost Time; and it occured to me that one could easily talk of any chapter of this book in analysis, which is a high, high compliment, for it indicates that an experience with a book can penetrated one's very psyche; and what better is there in the book than the Proustian paradoxical discovery of finding all complexities of beauty in the simple, the uncomplicated, the serene--this is a great book, which makes, unlike so many books, an exceedingly gracious exit, advising us, importantly--perhaps saving our lives!--how to ESCAPE from the spell of great books, of which this may be one, and which certainly derives from the richest seven-course meal the French have yet offered the world.

I will start out by saying I'm somewhat biased towrd the subject matter as proust is one of my favorite writers - 'philosophers' (peut -etre ?). Nontheless, compliments do no justice to this excellent book. It is possible to read it in a weekend, on a beach or in the library, yet the wisdom it contains will last a lifetime. As it examines peculiarites of Proust's life and character, as well as his famous novel "In Search of Lost Time", De Botton distills the contents of the seven volumes to provide valuable advice on friendship, love, money, work and ultimately how to live a better life. Ulike self help books, "How Proust Can Change your Life" does not ask you to make lists of things to do, change your personality or tell you that "if you can see it you can be it". Nor will you find quick solutions to complex issues like personal change and many of the associated buzzwords of most intellectually insulting guides like 'proactive', 'multitask', 'lifestyle' or even 'successful'. It will not tell you how to become rich. It merely asks you to examine and think about your life so that you may understand yourself better. It also shows how paying attention to minor details is the key to appreciating others, ourselves and the world. It is simply an excellent book. Unfortunately, too few will read it, but those few will have a rare privilege.

before this study. This study is a collection of transcribed lectures by an award winning poet. Great insight but keep in might they are lectures to students who are concurrently reading the text and thus are familiar with the exacting details of the text. The author quotes from a prize study, which I would highly recommend next to Beckett's thesis, by Howard Moss THE MACIG LATERN OF MARCEL PROUST.

Ms Rose is without a doubt a talented writer, but her work here is tediously self-indulgent and trite and sheds very little light on Proust, or indeed on his effect on her. Give it a miss and read the master! I don't think I'll be visiting Ms Rose's other work anytime soon...

Phyllis Rose introduces the reader to Proust. Because of this book I was inspired to start reading In Search Of Lost Time and possibly I will not stop for at least a year, if ever. Phyllis Rose encourages and inspires the reader to have their own personal and rewarding remembrance of things past and to recognise that the mighty and the modest share in what it is to be human. .

If you have read Proust, or attempted to, or mean to someday... Ms. Rose will not let you down. I love how she sees Proust...and how others feel he "doesn't apply" and miss the point. How many times have we been told that some great writer is "passe" or "impossible" or just not trendy enough? (those who sneer may just feel unequal to the task of reading a particular author) Rose takes it slowly, she weaves Proust into her daily life. It is a brisk read, but I found myself stopping & sharing bits with others. I hope to re-tackle Proust soon! I have been inspired.