Marcel Proust: A Life

Henry McBride Series in Modernism and Modernity

by William C. Carter

This book is a magisterial account of the life and times of Marcel Proust, one of the greatest literary voices of the twentieth century. Based on a host of recently available letters, memoirs, and manuscripts, it sheds new light on Proust's character, his development as an artist, and his masterpiece 'In Search of Lost Time' (long known in English as Remembrance of Things Past). The biography also sets Proust's life in the decadent artistic and social context of the French fin de sihcle and the years leading up to World War I. The glittering Parisian world of which Proust was a part was also home to such luminaries as Anatole France, Jean Cocteau, and Andri Gide. William Carter brings this vibrant social world to life while he explores the inner world of Proust's intellectual and artistic development, as well as his most intimate personal experience. Carter examines Proust's passionate attachment to his mother, his deep love for the scenes of his youth, his flirtation with Parisian high society, his complicated sexual desires, and his irrevocable commitment to literary truth and shows how all these played out in the making of his great novel. In the book's abundance of detail, its we

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, France, Literature, Biography Memoir, French Literature

946 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 2000

About the author

Distinguished Professor of French. Ireland Award for Scholarly Distinction 2002. Specialist in Proust Studies and nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature. Project Director for Marcel Proust at UAB, 1988, which was featured on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today.” Palmes Académiques awarded by the French government in 1989. Inducted into Alabama Arts Hall of Fame, 1990. Prix Servir du Rotary International de Paris, 1992 Winner of the Alabama Association of Teachers of French 1994 Prix d’Excellence “for services rendered to French culture” 1994 and 2000. Named the Outstanding Foreign Language Teacher: Postsecondary by the Alabama Association of Foreign Language Teachers for 1999. He served as project director and coproducer for a prize-winning documentary, Marcel Proust: A Writer's Life, which aired nationally on PBS in 1993. This involved adapting works by Proust as well as selecting music, photography, and other archival material to tell the story of Proust's life. His book, The Proustian Quest, was selected by CHOICE as an “Outstanding Academic Book of 1993. His recent biography, Marcel Proust: A Life (Yale University Press, 2000), was selected by The New York Times Book Review,The Los Angeles Times, and the Sunday Times (London) as one of the best books of 2000. Harold Bloom in Genius calls Carter’s biography the “definitive” one. This biography was also selected by Foreword Magazine as “The Book of the Year” 2000 in the non-fiction category. That same year Professor Carter was invited by PEN America to be part of a special tribute to Proust at Lincoln Center. Carter is frequently interviewed and consulted on Marcel Proust by the national and international media, print, radio, and television. He is a member of the editorial board of the Proust journal Bulletin Marcel Proust and a permanent correspondent of the Proust Research Center at the Sorbonne. Carter’s most recent books are Proust in Love and The Memoirs of Ernest A. Forssgren: Proust’s Swedish Valet, both published in 2006 by Yale University Press.

Reviews

[Kalliope · Rating 5 out of 5]

A la Recherche de Proust: Une vie retrouvée.

Whenever one mentions the reading a biography of a famous artist or writer or composer, a debate always springs up. Why bother with the life of this creator, why not just concentrate on his/her production? When this door-stopper of a tome arrived on the mail, I thought again: why bother? I jumped in nonetheless, with a curious mixture of curiosity and incredulity. I knew so little about Proust’s life that I did not even know that there was very little to be known anyway.

I continued with my doubts in the earlier part of the book. I felt the suspicion that I was reading a full fledged The Life and Miracles of Saint Proust. Proust as the object of a cult. The book seemed to be based on the premise that we were to adore everything Proust did and touched. This is something that he himself seems not to have fallen for, except for once with his covetous hiding of Whistler’s leftbehind gloves. But when he did this, Proust was still young.

So, what is the interest of a life of someone who basically did not have a life? He was a spoilt kid of an upper middle class family; he relished in letting his delicate health trap him in his body; he could not find a profession or a socially respected activity; he lived off the rents of his inheritance; he could not participate in any way in the war because of his general weakness; he was a social butterfly whose only activity was to attend parties; he travelled little and always on the trail of someone else’s journeys. The relics that have become the center of adoration are his eccentric habits and absurd antics. His contemporaries themselves perceived him as a dilettante and superficial socialite. As he was seen as no more than a society-page writer, or at the most as an ingenious author of funny literary pastiches, Gide at first rejected to publish his Du côté de chez Swan. Gide did not think that Proust was capable of writing anything of weight. For years then, Proust became a voyeur, figuratively and literally. By wanting to know about this uninteresting life we become voyeurs too, idle ones at that. So, why bother with this hagiography?

Proust himself took issue at this obsession with knowing the lives of writers as a necessary step to understand someone’s artistic production. This is one of his main contentions in his essay Contre Sainte-Beuve and an opinion that he repeatedly expressed. This could have been, however, his defensive stance. He must have thought that the superficial impression of his overall life did not represent his inner self, and also, may be, that it was better to keep out of view some aspects of his chosen habits.

But I am fascinated by history and Proust lived during a fruitful and fertile age of French--mostly Parisian-- cultural production in which social circles were the breeding grounds. To follow his life then provides an entry into those Salons of a gilded world, the legendary Fin-de –siècle which we now know was also the fin d’un monde or foregone age. And although Proust has a point in his critique of Sainte Beuve’s insistence of the private lives as a key to understanding of art, our contextualizing is now different.

Together with the interest offered by the wider context, Carter’s ability becomes apparent as the book proceeds. In his account, among all the details of a seemingly superficial and capricious lifestyle, Proust starts emerging as a very intriguing and endearing personality. Yes, granted, Proust was irritating and manipulative, and Carter does show impatience with him a couple of times, in particular when he has detected that even his parents had to suffer the despotic mischief of their beloved child. But as he says, Proust had an extraordinary capacity for tenderness and sensitivity. He also emerges as a brave man incapable of base behavior. For example, Proust spearheaded the involvement of the intellectuals in the defense of Dreyfuss during that shameful episode; he would walk through Paris at night during a bomb blitz without seeking refuge; he was very generous and distributed economic help for the needy; and for all his high society fluttering, he had no prejudices against lower social strata.

Carter’s biography is therefore a wonderful read. It is also the product of an admirable task that must have been blatantly and excruciatingly hard work. He has presented, chronologically, in a very clear language his very clear conclusions after an incredible amount of labor. I cannot image the volumes of material Carter must have dealt with, but he seems to have rummaged and explored with a fine-toothed comb heaps and heaps of letters, articles and diaries. And it is noticeable that he has methodically and rigorously checked the long list of names of the persons who cropped up in Proust’s gregarious life style, and has contrasted despairing testimonies. So this big tome is a very economical way of dealing with all the complementary written material that Proust has left behind.

This biography is therefore an excellent source for tracking other aspects of his writing. Along the 800 pages Carter gradually lists the names of writers Proust was familiar with and on which he built his extraordinarily extensive and rich literary baggage. The same can be said about his musical and artistic interests. In music his taste was partly guided by the ear of his friend, the composer Reynaldo Hahn, and Carter includes those pieces that had a special resonance in Proust. As for painting Carter shows how Proust relied on the tastes, knowledge and illustrated material of the collector Charles Ephrussi. These are all arts that found a place in La recherche. Finally, Carter gives also a very meticulous account of the very complicated history of the printing of the whole of La recherche.

In spite of the great amount of information presented, however, Carter does not drown in the material nor does he present a simple chronicle. He develops captivating themes. While following ordered time, the titles of his chapters, such as “Vanity Fair”, “Love and War”, “Fountain of Youth”, are inviting from the very moment in which one is just flicking through the pages in anticipation of reading this biography.

The fact that Proust could produce La recherche only once he had turned forty shows that his had been a fertile life after all. The literary soaking up and inexhaustible bookish pedigree; the resolved creativity crises with the Ruskinian salvation that showed him that he could seek an alternative way to structure his work; the Sainte-Beuve dialectic that helped him in formulating a suitable Narrator with a rich voice that spoke of more than one kind of existence, and who could shift in time and record life from different vantage points; all are topics that Carter develops alongside more trivial aspects of Proust’s life.

And Carter does not give all of these away in one delivery. He presents them gradually, by installments, in a Proustian structured and paced way. So that it is by the end of the biography that we can grasp what La recherche entails although Carter has not spoilt it by giving it away. The structure of Proust’s work becomes clear also in the conclusion of this reading. Carter has not damaged our encounter with Proust’s Oeuvre. He has prepared us to approach it with attuned ears and focused eyes, as well as awaken our olfactory senses to enter the Narrator’s world.

I have only one wish left unfulfilled in this book. I would have welcomed the numerous original quotes, in French, to be included somewhere in the book.

This has been a memorable reading, with or without a madeleine.

[Renato · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never thought I'd be one to read and actually enjoy biographies. My intention approaching this one was merely informative and as means of research to understand better the blurred lines between Proust's and his narrator's life as I seem to be completely obsessed about his work. The whole concept of reading biographies just seemed to me something boring with too many details that probably wouldn't really interest me as I'm more to enjoy fiction, beautiful metaphors and analogies and well developed and fully realized characters. So add all that to the fact that Carter's bio on Proust is about eight hundred pages long (there are a lot of notes in the last portion of his book) and, of course, written in English. I approached it with the general plan of finishing in 2014, but I didn't want to let it become a chore as it started off real slow for me. But what did I know? I finished it before planned and already have another biography (James Joyce, by Richard Ellmann) lined up for January!

I already knew for certain that I would enjoy the book once Carter started talking about the Recherche era - to read about his conceiving of the project, his notebooks where he kept his ideas, names for places and characters he would use, scenes he knew he had do develop, his opinions about art and literature - but I feared I would struggle to get through everything else that came before that, which amounted for almost forty years of his life. It was like reading fiction that a friend recommends to you but advise that the first third will be difficult but that it'll eventually get your attention. However, this wasn't really the case and I didn't have to wait that long.

After the first few pages went on - mainly about Jeanne and Adrien's marriage - my interest grew bigger and bigger as I realized his big and ambitious project didn't simply materialize itself in front of Proust as an apparition and didn't come to him in a dream: it was born inside of him ever since his earliest days. Not only I enjoyed learning more about Proust's career and his development as a writer (his first stories, his articles and essays, Pleasures and Days, the Ruskin translations, his fear of not having talent and constant doubting himself), it was also very interesting to see the person he was becoming fuller before my eyes as the time was passing - not only the time it took me to actually read Carter's pages, these twenty or so days, but also the chronological times of Proust's life: his childhood, school years, military service, society figure and his devotion to his great task. It was fascinating to witness his germination and expansion, but it wasn't always amusing.

Carter manages to depict Proust as a real person so well that despite all my admiration and how fond I've grown of him because of his magnum opus, I can say that I probably would not be able to be his friend, to maintain a long lasting relationship with him or to exchange letters on a daily basis, as it was at the time their most common method of communication. I rolled my eyes repeatedly in countless accounts of episodes of his life because of how difficult a person he was, how demanding and overall simply too different from me. His manipulations and schemes simply go against my idea of friendship.

But even though I clearly felt antagonized by his apparent high maintenance ways, I, like his friends who constantly heard him speaking of his ill health and how he was going to die soon for more than a decade, through so many sickness and almost never feeling completely well, I felt the impact - even though all logic would suggest otherwise, of learning of his death, of reading how his last hours went on, who was there with him, the last words he spoke, the fat woman he saw in his room - of losing someone I have esteemed for so long. I rushed through the last twenty pages with my heart racing and with chills and feeling emotional while finishing his biography, as if finishing it would consummate his end, as if closing the book for the last time meant burying him, as if I had the power to not let it happen had I stopped reading it before the dreaded moment happened.

Intertwined with all of this, as all matters truly are, Carter also gives us great details of the Recherche époque such as episodes from Proust's life that he adapted in the book - like his haunting relationship he had with his mother that was used for the narrator's mother and grandmother -, traces from acquaintances he used to form his characters (physically and psychologically) - Montesquiou and baron Doazan were used for the impossible baron de Charlus, for example, and the various sources he drew inspiration to form the glorious Mme. Verdurin. The seemingly endless process of writing and rewriting, the correcting of first, second, third and even more proofs and additions to the text that the writer went through - and made his publisher go through -, and the decisions on how to divide and name his volumes.

Other great aspect to read about was how his work greatly expanded from one volume to three, then five to seven and the absurd fact - it wasn't so absurd back then though as the writer had never really proven yet how he was capable of writing as well as he delivered - that Proust had actually to pay to publish Swann's Way and how, after its release, it gained such high acclaim that he had publishers to choose from and begging to have his subsequent volumes. Through Carter's words, it was possible to feel Proust's love and his devotion for his little book, his ideas for marketing his product and, ultimately, his wish of simply wanting to be read.

Rating: there isn't any other way to rate this fully well researched biography - which derived from countless sources to back up the author's interpretations on Proust's life and words, his letters and letters from those who knew him well - that never vowed to paint its subject with only the best colors, but above all was impartial, informative and true before anything else: 5 stars.

[Michael Perkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Sometime during this year, perhaps on the occasion of her birthday, Antoinette Faure, whose long eyelashes continued to captivate Marcel, asked him to answer questions about himself in an English keepsake book, then a fixture of the social scene. Although Marcel left five answers blank, he took his task seriously as he wrote in the book whose red cover bore in large letters the title Confessions: An Album to Record Thoughts, Feelings, Etc."

This became the basis of what is known as "The Proust Questionnaire" in Vanity Fair.

=========

“We must all create a world of fiction in which we alone can live. Our world never matches the one inhabited by those with whom we are most intimate. A writer, especially one of genius, creates a world we can all visit, like paupers touring a palace, wondering, as we explore its splendors, at the remarkable differences with our own more ramshackle abode, while struck by the persistence of human nature and emotion that makes us feel that we, too, could live in such a mansion. Proust always invites us in. After making a particularly revealing remark about an aspect of a character’s personality or behavior that the reader could have thought unique, he deftly switches to a pronoun, one or we, and embraces us all…he wrote a book that places the reader at its heart, a book that perhaps more than any other, is about each of us and our many reflections in the mirror.”

====

One of my Berkeley professors once told me that I was a student of human nature. Quite true.

So was Marcel Proust, which is part of what makes him so interesting to me.

"The proper study of mankind [humankind] is man [humankind]."

-Alexander Pope

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In addition to reading French literature, during his formative years Marcel also read in translation such English novelists of the nineteenth century as Robert Louis Stevenson and George Eliot. Eliot’s novels Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss remained lifelong favorites. Soon he added novels by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, as well as The Arabian Nights. He later remembered these enchanting Oriental tales, which filled his “adolescence with wonder,” when he began his own nocturnal narrative.

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The question that tormented Marcel in his senior year, unanswered completely until the concluding volume of the Search, was whether art has intrinsic value. Does art point to any universal, eternal value? Can it transcend mere materialism and human vanity? Proust lived his entire life, however, as if the answer were a resounding “Yes!”

======

On the day Laure Hayden met Marcel, the thirty-seven-year-old courtesan and the schoolboy were quite taken with each other. Without knowing it, Marcel had just met the first model for one of the Search’s major characters: Odette de Crécy, the courtesan who becomes Mme Swann.

Through Laure, Marcel had his first glimpse at the world of the demimonde, of the milieu, mores, and customs of beautiful, clever, elegant, and expensive prostitutes. With her years of experience observing, teaching, and flattering men—a professional necessity—Laure recognized Marcel’s precocious, genuine gifts. He constantly amazed her by the acuity of his psychological observations, especially from one so young, expressed in words that were often as eloquent as the classical French of La Rochefoucauld or Blaise Pascal. She was mad about Marcel Proust, taking him along wherever she went. He attended her parties, where he was thrilled to meet dukes, writers, and future members of the Académie française. As Carter documents, many of the characters in 'Search' are composites of people Proust knew.

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Proust understood the importance of Anatole France’s influence on style through his use of “exquisite language.” His schoolfriend, Daniel, wrote a poem full of the grotesque. Proust gave Daniel some heartfelt advice. He must free himself from the grip of the decadents, who had spoiled his ability to express his “thoughts sincerely, completely.”

As a cure, Daniel should “practice Latin discourses” and, above all, read the classics. Marcel listed Homer, Plato, Virgil, Tacitus, Shakespeare, Shelley, Emerson, Goethe, La Fontaine, Racine, Rousseau, Flaubert, Baudelaire—and, among contemporaries, Renan and France. Though still a schoolboy, Proust understood the basis of creativity: “You will learn (by reading the classics) that if your mind is original and strong, your works will be so only if you are absolutely sincere. . . . Simplicity is infinitely elegant, naturalness has ineffable charm.”

====

The adolescent Proust anticipates the future author of "Search"....

“Everyone is asleep in the great silent apartment.” He opens the window “to see one last time the sweet, tawny face, completely round, of the friendly moon. I hear, it seems, the breath, very fresh, cold, of all the sleeping things—the tree from which seeps blue light—beautiful blue light transfiguring in the distance, at an intersection of streets, the pale, blue paving stones, like a polar landscape electrically illuminated. Overhead stretch out infinite blue fields where frail stars flourish.”

Marcel described his bedside table cluttered with glasses, flacons, cool drinks, small expensively bound books, and letters of love and friendship. The adolescent writer has already placed himself at the center of his web to observe and record the universe around him: “Divine hour. Ordinary things, like nature, I have consecrated, being unable to vanquish them. I have clothed them with my soul and
with intimate, splendid images. I am living in a sanctuary, in the midst of a spectacle. I am the center of things and each brings me magnificent or melancholy sensations that I enjoy. I have before my eyes splendid visions.”

==========

Anatole France, what a cad….

Young Proust received an invitation to Mme Arman de Caillavet’s salon, where he met the contemporary writer he admired the most: Anatole France.

Mme de Caillavet, née Léontine Lippmann, lived in a sumptuous town house at 12, avenue Hoche, near the Arc de Triomphe. Mme Arman, as she was called, had met France in 1883 and not long afterward became his mistress, despite being a married woman. Caillavet was said to be furious with jealousy at his wife’s betrayal, but he remained discreet. All three parties went to extraordinary lengths to hide a liaison known to all.

France practically lived in the house, where he took his meals with the couple, yet every day the three played the same comedy for the sake of appearances. France and Léontine began the day by making love in the writer’s flat, then they returned to avenue Hoche for lunch. When guests came at tea-time, France, hat in hand as though just arriving, would enter through the drawing room door and announce, “I happened to be in the neighborhood and felt I had to pay my respects.” France divorced his wife, who was left to raise their two-year-old daughter Suzanne alone.

========

Even as an adult, Marcel would remain emotionally dependent on his mother, something his mother encouraged. Both of his parents were concerned what Marcel would do with his life. Proust served a year in the French army. Afterwards, he trained to be a lawyer and then earned a degree in literature. But his parents would feel frustrated that he did nothing with it. Instead, during the magnificent Belle Époque, Proust became a social butterfly who sought out the most prestigious aristocratic salons. As a young man, he was in awe of these people but later became very critical of them, as shown in his novel. His parents were also concerned about his homosexual tendencies.

It was a time of great change. Proust came of age in a world with no electricity or central heating, without rapid transit and mass communication. By 1910 he had witnessed the arrival of electric lighting, the telephone, the automobile, motion pictures, the Paris subway, and the airplane. He characterized his era as the “age of speed”

His parents were highly cultured and well-read. They were prosperous bourgeoisie and his father was a famous doctor, as the story above demonstrates. His mother was Jewish, but the rest of the family were Roman Catholic. Marcel did not identify as Jewish, but was a stout defender of Dreyfus.

Marcel's health was delicate from a young age, as he suffered from chronic asthma and other maladies. After his father died in 1903 and his mother two years later, Marcel and his younger brother, Robert, inherited a good deal of money. Robert followed in his father's footsteps as a medical doctor, whereas Marcel used his wealth to do as he pleased. He had decided when he was a teenager that he wanted to be a writer. But the needed discipline had been elusive.

It was only when Proust realized he wasn't getting any younger, and that the older aristocrats he once admired had one foot in the grave, that he got serious and focused about his writing. To avoid distractions, he opted for a cloistered existence in his cork-lined Paris apartment, sleeping during the day and writing at night. He had the help of an amazing assistant named Céleste Albaret who lived in the apartment. In addition with assisting with Proust's physical needs, she helped incorporate edits into his manuscript.

Four of seven manuscripts were published in Proust's lifetime. He won the Prix Goncourt for his second volume "Within a Budding Grove " (aka "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower"). Proust worked on "Search" during WW I, still living in Paris. He died of pneumonia in 1922.

Of course this fat book has many more details than I could ever incorporate here. But the biographer, William Carter, co-produced a very nice documentary about Proust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVen3...

===========================

Proust's father, Dr. Adrien Proust, was a trailblazing epidemiologist.

Amazing story....

https://thelandofdesire.substack.com/...

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a 5-star biography. Marcel Proust was the strangest man I have ever encountered--in life or in literature, and throughout the first quarter or third of the biography, I found him so exasperating that I wasn't sure I could continue. Both he and his Belle Epoque era seemed so fussy, artificial, self-absorbed that I wanted to smack him and it, but I was on a mission to read the biography in preparation for tackling the novel that was his life's work.

At about the point where all of France became obsessed with the Dreyfus Affair, my sense of Proust began to soften. He was among the Dreyfusards who supported Dreyfus against the wholly trumped up charges against him, when the lines between the anti-semites and militarists and those who stood against them and for justice began to emerge. There was a moral hook to hang one's hat on. It also became clearer that, ultimately, Proust's sympathies would not lie with the socialites and aristocrats who so enchanted him as a very young man. These factors opened a way for me to begin to understand Proust. He was rich but not an apologist for aristocracy. He was not a dogmatist and was not to write in support of a political or social ideal. He was, it turns out, a mirror and an author who sought, above all, to portray the truth of human souls as he uncovered those truths in his hyper-attentive experience of others. As his life continued he became only more of an eccentric, a piece of work, both challenging and adored by most who knew him. As he spent most of his later life sick and in bed--seeming like the most intransigent of hypochondriacs (and not just to me), he turned himself inside out, he poured himself out, he quite literally gave his life to his book.

Some of Proust's eccentricities were amusing. Here’s a quotation from the biography (p. 712), from around 1920, when Proust was awarded the Prix Goncourt. It made me laugh out loud:

"Jean Binet-Valmer, a conservative critic and militarist, praised elements of Proust’s work but thought it was “prewar”. He would have favored giving the Prix Goncourt to Swann’s Way in 1913 but blamed the Académie Goncourt for passing over Dorgelés’ patriotic novel for one whose morality appeared suspect. Proust wrote Binet-Valmer that he was eager to read Dorgelés’ novel once his sight improved: “Since I have not been well enough to go see an optometrist, I’m going to buy all kinds of glasses, and if I succeed in finding the right lenses, I will read ... Les Croix de Bois.”

He had indeed refused to get out of bed to see an eye doctor and directed his house-keeper to buy a lot of glasses from which he would try to find one that would provide the correction he needed. His response to Binet-Valmer also contains, between the lines, a jab at and dismissal of both the criticism and the other novel. For all his weird ways, Proust was strong: not the servant of himself (or others) but always and only of his great novel.

Carter has written a great, exhaustive (but not exhausting!) biography. He brought me around to find more sympathy for Proust. Proust's behavior was often exasperating and infuriating to those around him. And yet he was loved. It's harder to see that side of him. What was it? His courtesy, his brilliance, his kindness, eventually his manifest genius as his novel was published in stages? I don't know what it was, but the evidence is clear from the letters, the attention, and the behavior of his friends, family, and retainers. And so, the story of his death was achingly sweet and painful. Man Ray took a photo of him on his death bed and James Joyce apparently showed up at his funeral. And A La Recherche du Temps Perdu has made him immortal.

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've ever wanted extensive knowledge of Marcel Proust's investment failings, look no further! Chockfull of other stuff, too; using copious letters sent to and from Proust, Carter crafts a vivid portrait of the life and times of Marcel Proust that seems both contemporary and timeless.

[Patrícia Raquel Pereira · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we can do with an Elstir, with a Vinteuil; with men like these we do really fly from star to star."

(I'll add my entire thoughtful review soon.)

[Marius · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book in Paris, during my vacation, 7 years ago. I thought wow, biography of M. Proust, it must be interesting, especially when our teacher so much spoke about him at school. You know, romantic high aristocratic society, during La Belle Époque. What can be wonderful!

But this book was opposite.

I never known, that M. Proust's life was so dramatic, nervous and full of anxieties, but simultaneously had many imagination and love. He was very strange man, addicted to medicine, had odd (and when I say odd, it's really very, very, very odd) habits; these facts are shown by his correspondence with mother and friends. He used secret words about same-sex relationships. Frankly, he had personal opinion about all Europe's events - from policy to plains. So, now, I know about him everything: what he wrote to his mother, what type of shit or urine he had, how many times he ate (and what meal), why he participated in the duel and even the cause of orgasm or what male-prostitutes wrote about him.

Author describes how the famous novel (In Search of Lost Time) was born, prototypes of distinguish characters, M. Proust disputes with editors and etc. This book retails every year or every day of famous writer life. At first, it was very hard to read, because author describes each flower, each book or each place, which influenced M Proust. Many details...so, sometimes it was boring (although style isn't academic). But from the middle of the book, the text became interesting and I couldn't stop reading page after page... So, if you want to become expert of Marcel Proust or to change your attitude to "In Search of Lost Time," you should read W. C. Carter book.

[Francisca · Rating 5 out of 5]

at last, it is done. it took me a little over a month but i did it. it is finished and i can proudly say i did not skip a single page. and it was amazing. unlike the Leonardo da Vinci biography i tried and failed to connect with at the start of the year, this biography was just the right type of a life's retelling i could have read. not only because it has helped me to understand proust's novels better, or at least from a more humane perspective, but also because it made feel for him.

i just couldn't help it. i laughed at his silly habits and stubborness at the beginning just as much as it saddened me to read about the same stubborness that drove him to his death years afterwards. and isn't that the greatest goal (or at least measuring point) for any good (or memorable) biography? to make your subject come alive not only as an interesting specimen, unique and worthy enough of one's time and curiosity, but as a human being? a human being that matters not because of whatever great achievement he might have done during his lifetime but because he lived just like you and me do every single day.

and now, as i've come to the end of this side of the story, i feel more than ready and excited to carry on with in search of lost time, to take one after the other volume until i can properly say that i know a bit more of proust-the-artist as i have known proust-the-person

p.s. also, i think it should be worthy to note that apparently EVERYONE was queer back in paris during the early twentieth century. honestly.

[Olivierco · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very detailed biography. Proust's life isn't as interesting as his works.

[Jena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esta biografía de Marcel Proust es tan extensa, tan completa, tan veraz y detallada como la de George D. Painter de hace 57 años; no encuentro nada en absoluto que no se haya dicho ya. Sin embargo, es conveniente para todos los estudiosos del tema leerla y poder comparar las 2 en cuanto a la forma de narrar y su claridad.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent biography of Proust.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and fascinating. I love Proust's work, and reading this biography, I found myself loving him too. Would I have been able to tolerate him in real life? Probably not. He was so demanding and self-centered, I think it would have pushed me away. But he was also so tender and endearing, so maybe I could have enjoyed him in small doses?

Carter does a great job of presenting facts and lets the reader decide their value. Although there are comments on Proust's actions and interpretations given, the author lets the reader decide for themselves. He doesn't get in the way of the facts.

I learned much about In Search of Lost Time. It was interesting to learn which characters were based on which real life people. The biography deepened my understanding of some of the relationships in Search. I was terribly disappointed that the girls of Balbec did not exist.

I laughed often at Proust's actions or words. He was quite a character. Some memorable mind-pictures: 1. Proust wearing three overcoats packed with stuffing to stay warm at his brother's wedding. 2. Proust listening to concerts & operas over the telephone from his bed. 3. The caged rats - I could have done without that.

How much of Proust's health issues were real, and how much exaggerated or self-inflicted? For me it could be anywhere from 75%-25% to 25%-75%. Certainly he had issues with asthma. But how he treated it likely made it worse. His drug use is frightening. It's lucky he lived as long as he did.

I cried a little at the end. Proust was a genius....but he didn't have to die when he did. Stubborn to the end. The later sections of Search are not quite up to the same standards as the earlier parts that he reworked multiple times. If only he had lived longer.

[Paul Johnston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing a biography must be a real challenge - how neutral should the biographer be in presenting their material? how much analysis and assessment (of both life and work) should they include? to what extent should they present a take on their subject's life and to what extent should they aim to be objective (or even "definitive")? The fact that this book made me ponder the difficulties of being a biographer is of course a rather back-handed compliment (indeed, perhaps not a compliment at all). William Carter goes for a neutral, scholarly approach, so that his biography is essentially a detailed narrative of facts, reminiscences and excerpts. There is no doubt that he has done his work and there are 810 pages of text and more than 100 pages of notes to prove it. So I learnt a lot about Proust. There is little analysis and assessment, but I am afraid that the little there is did not leave me wanting more. Carter seems to have a fairly conventional idea of Proust (as a man and as a writer), so perhaps his restraint in terms of commentary is wise. This book leaves the reader to make their own judgements on that rather strange individual Marcel Proust and does not try to be that type of biography that leaves you feeling "now I understand what made X tick" or "wow. that's an interesting perspective on y". Perhaps Carter thought that kind of biography of Proust was impossible or perhaps that was just not the kind of book he wanted to write. No doubt someone else has or will give it a try!

[Frank McAdam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always felt a good biography brings not only its subject to life but the times in which he lived as well. Carter does an excellent job with this, discussing the Franco-Prussian War, the Belle Epoque, the Dreyfus affair, and World War I if not in depth then at least to the extent that they played a part in Proust's life. There are also informative biographical sketches of just about everyone who had any dealings with Proust. This is particularly interesting as many served for models of characters in the huge novel. As for the life of Proust himself, it's exhaustively chronicled. If anything there may be a bit too much information as every discussion Proust had with his editors is relentlessly analyzed. The treatment of Proust the man is sympathetic, most notably regarding his homosexuality, and does not attempt to hide his many flaws and idiosyncrasies. To achieve this depth, Carter relies heavily on the memoirs of Celeste Albert, Proust's housekeeper and secretary during the latter part of his life, a source that had been unavailable to previous biographers such as Painter.

[Hugh Coverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Near the end of his biography of Marcel Proust, William C. Carter concisely describes the creator of In Search of Lost Time as "the most complicated and least practical man in Paris." An understatement that is illustrated time and time again throughout this exhaustive study and exhausting read. There are moments when you feel as if Carter takes note of every day in the whole of Proust's life. Little appears here without a purpose. What is most wonderful is how Carter demonstrates just where Proust's great Search began, and who the personages are who inspired his eternal characters, and how close the literary world came on several occasions to being without the Search, if not in its entirety, then in its rich fullness. Time consuming, but certainly well worth the effort.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic biography. It’s the first about Proust that I‘ve read, so it’s difficult to judge in terms of the substance (though the fact that it comes very well reviewed speaks for itself, I think) but it’s incredibly well-written. You get a good sense of what Proust was like as a person, and Carter manages to give the context needed to get more out of Proust‘s writing.

[echpiar]

برا دوستانی که اهل کتاب صوتی هستند، دانیال خورسندی جدیدا شروع کرده به خوانش این کتاب عظیم، و الان که این ریویوو رو مینویسم هنوز جلد اول هست،
خیلی زیبا و زنده اجرا میکنه(بصورت سه بعدی) که شنیدنش خالی از لطف نیست.دوستانی که مشتاق هستند میتونن از اپلیکیشن
کست باکس اسم کتاب رو سرچ کنن، کما اینکه تو کانال تلگرامی هم اپلود میکنه فایل ها متاسفانه شناسه ای ازش ندارم..

[Arvind Radhakrishnan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of the best literary biographies I have read.It brings out the treasures of Proust's ISLT and also gives the reader a very comprehensive picture of the writer's life and struggles. Proust is like an inexhaustible granary that will continue to nourish future writers.

[H.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating tale of an eccentric vampire.

[Graham Catt · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent account of a unique life.

[Sean de la Rosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Proust was an intellectual of the 1920's leisure class in Paris. A gifted author with many personal demons, Proust turned out colossal volumes of prose that stupefied the literary community of his time. The biographer does excellent research, and leaves pretty much no stone unturned in detailing the life of this writer. The biography is well over 1000 pages. I'm not sure who reads books of this length anymore?

[Steve Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and quite informative. My only quibble would be the abruptness of the ending. I understand that it is titled "A Life" - which naturally would indicate that the book would end with Proust's death. Nonetheless, the main thread of the book is the development of "In Search of Lost Time," and I would have appreciated a brief epilogue explaining how the text was shaped after his death. This is about Proust after all....one should have no fear of an expansive text!

[Eric Stephan · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you can get a copy of this book... It's out of print... Then do so, provided you are up for a long and detailed view of a life. Truly good biography for anyone that is interested in Proust. Details of his writing, publishing tangles, some talk about his sexual oddities but not a big focus... A real view.

[J Quiles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unnecessarily long. It is at times repetitive. Sometimes, it is difficult to keep track of the multitude of Proust’s friends and acquaintances who come and go. I wish this work had contained a bit more analysis than it does.

[John]

I need to review my marginal notes before offering a review. So many books over the years.

[Jerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

thick.