A Reader's Guide to Marcel Proust

by Milton Hindus

This title seeks to show through detailed analysis of Proust's philosophical and literary influences as well as his conscious aesthetic, how the various motifs in his works intertwine. It includes sections on Proust's earlier works.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism

275 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Milton Hindus was one of the thirteen founding faculty members of Brandeis University. He stayed at Brandeis throughout his career and taught for 33 years (1948-1981) before retiring as the Edytha Macy Gross Professor of Humanities. From 1965 to 1967 he was the occupant of the Peter and Elizabeth Wolkenstein Chair in English and American Literature at Brandeis. In 1986, Hindus was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by the University. He was elected three times as president of the Brandeis chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and served as Chairman of the Jewish Faculty Group of Greater Boston.

He is, perhaps, most famous for his book The Crippled Giant, which details his meeting with the then-exiled French novelist and anti-semite pamphleteer Louis-Ferdinand Celine. Hindus gained instant recognition as well as notoriety for his brutally honest portrayal of the much maligned literary figure, and received both accolades as well as derision for his book.

His edited volume on Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass: One Hundred Years After (1955) won the Walt Whitman Prize from The Poetry Society of America. Hindus has also served as an editor of the sixteen-volume Encyclopaedia Judaica (1972).

Hindus was a regular book reviewer for The New York Herald Tribune from 1941 to 1943, and he also wrote reviews for various journals devoted to the review of recent publications, such as The New Boston, and the Kenyon and Sewanee Reviews. He contributed literary reviews and essays for general interest publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, The Chicago Sunday Tribune, and The New York Times Book Review.