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Proust Among the Stars
For many, Proust is the supreme European writer of the twentieth century. This book tackles his achievement head-on. Art, death, sex, politics, loss, guilt, morality--Proust's major themes are revealed and explained here.
"Proust Among the Stars" is a matchless close reading of "Remembrance of Things Past" and a lesson in how to read the great books profitably and pleasurably. Malcolm Bowie asserts that Proust's novel is one of the great exercises in speculative imagining in the world's literature; and that its originality lies first in the quality of Proust's textual invention, page after page, line after line. Proust's world constantly shimmers with a sense of multiple possibilities and is at the same time infused with the urge to order, obsessively to organize. Bowie examines how Proust achieves this in his writing, as opposed to his themes, plots, or theories.
An original, beautiful, and deeply moving book, "Proust Among the Stars" shows how Proust's work deepens our understanding of our lives and ourselves.
"Proust Among the Stars" is a matchless close reading of "Remembrance of Things Past" and a lesson in how to read the great books profitably and pleasurably. Malcolm Bowie asserts that Proust's novel is one of the great exercises in speculative imagining in the world's literature; and that its originality lies first in the quality of Proust's textual invention, page after page, line after line. Proust's world constantly shimmers with a sense of multiple possibilities and is at the same time infused with the urge to order, obsessively to organize. Bowie examines how Proust achieves this in his writing, as opposed to his themes, plots, or theories.
An original, beautiful, and deeply moving book, "Proust Among the Stars" shows how Proust's work deepens our understanding of our lives and ourselves.
352 pages, Paperback
First published August 3, 1998
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272 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 21, 2021
Proust is a bourgeois wanderer in aristocratic salons, who often drugs himself with retrospection. And, like Dostoevsky, instead of presenting things in their logical sequence, that is to say beginning with the cause, Proust shows us first of all the effect and then the illusion strikes us.
There would be no point in trying to deny Proust’s narrator the scale and ambition of his creative project, however unfashionable these may now seem. The whole novel is haunted by the dream of art as a supremely efficacious mode of knowledge, and of story-telling as its finest flower. The big book of death-defying stories with which Proust’s novel compares itself is the Thousand and One Nights [a favorite of the author], in which the story-teller’s art and guile are endlessly remobilised to achieve a further stay of execution. ‘Narrate or die’, for Proust’s narrator as for Scheherazade, is the imperative which underlies the exercise of verbal craft.
A la recherche du temps perdu is not only ‘about’ time but about the linear process of uncovering new time-truths: the plot leads slowly towards a grandly orchestrated redemptive view, and time envisaged in these terms is emphatically distinguished from the dimension in which hours and days are merely spent, lost or frittered away.
The author, Malcolm Bowie, taught French Literature at Oxford and the University of London. His book won the 2001 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism.
The book is divided into several chapters: Self, Time, Art, Politics, Morality, Sex, and Death, all full of excellent insights and quotes from Proust.
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It's important to note that this book assumes detailed knowledge of Proust's novel, so one should read it after reading Proust, otherwise the references in this book won't make any sense.
================
Why AI Can’t Properly Translate Proust
The point is that a translator of Proust’s classic novel requires more than just an understanding of French. You could be the most competent reader of French in the world and still find yourself bewildered by Proust, and not just because of his frankly exhausting prose style. To properly understand Proust—and hence to properly translate Proust—you also need to have a great deal of background knowledge. Knowledge about French society and life in the early 20th century (for example, you would need to know they used candles for lighting); knowledge of French history (of François I and Charles V and the rivalry between them); knowledge about early-20th-century French literature (the writing style of the time, allusions that authors might make); and knowledge about Proust himself (what were his main concerns?).
https://lithub.com/why-ai-cant-proper...
There would be no point in trying to deny Proust’s narrator the scale and ambition of his creative project, however unfashionable these may now seem. The whole novel is haunted by the dream of art as a supremely efficacious mode of knowledge, and of story-telling as its finest flower. The big book of death-defying stories with which Proust’s novel compares itself is the Thousand and One Nights [a favorite of the author], in which the story-teller’s art and guile are endlessly remobilised to achieve a further stay of execution. ‘Narrate or die’, for Proust’s narrator as for Scheherazade, is the imperative which underlies the exercise of verbal craft.
A la recherche du temps perdu is not only ‘about’ time but about the linear process of uncovering new time-truths: the plot leads slowly towards a grandly orchestrated redemptive view, and time envisaged in these terms is emphatically distinguished from the dimension in which hours and days are merely spent, lost or frittered away.
The author, Malcolm Bowie, taught French Literature at Oxford and the University of London. His book won the 2001 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism.
The book is divided into several chapters: Self, Time, Art, Politics, Morality, Sex, and Death, all full of excellent insights and quotes from Proust.
============
It's important to note that this book assumes detailed knowledge of Proust's novel, so one should read it after reading Proust, otherwise the references in this book won't make any sense.
================
Why AI Can’t Properly Translate Proust
The point is that a translator of Proust’s classic novel requires more than just an understanding of French. You could be the most competent reader of French in the world and still find yourself bewildered by Proust, and not just because of his frankly exhausting prose style. To properly understand Proust—and hence to properly translate Proust—you also need to have a great deal of background knowledge. Knowledge about French society and life in the early 20th century (for example, you would need to know they used candles for lighting); knowledge of French history (of François I and Charles V and the rivalry between them); knowledge about early-20th-century French literature (the writing style of the time, allusions that authors might make); and knowledge about Proust himself (what were his main concerns?).
https://lithub.com/why-ai-cant-proper...
December 31, 2012
This delightful book really is something of a critical tour de force.
Bowie achieves the rare combination of saying new things about an old book - his obvious critical skill becomes transposed into poetic, elegant investigations. Expositions become breathtaking and thrilling. His explorations of themes such as Death, Art, Morality and Time in ISOLT become artful in themselves.
This is glorious criticism. A truly wonderful look at ISOLT and a real "must have" for any fan of Proust's masterpiece.
Bowie achieves the rare combination of saying new things about an old book - his obvious critical skill becomes transposed into poetic, elegant investigations. Expositions become breathtaking and thrilling. His explorations of themes such as Death, Art, Morality and Time in ISOLT become artful in themselves.
This is glorious criticism. A truly wonderful look at ISOLT and a real "must have" for any fan of Proust's masterpiece.
Read
September 4, 2023Mark Twain ones said that '“A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”
In that way Proust's 'A la recherche du temps perdu' has always lingered as a book that I mabye should read, but up till now have not come around to reading. Especially as a Protagonist of Gay literature, he always pops up in a lot of books and movies I've seen.
I picked up this book to get an idea what the fuss is all about and maybe get some inspiration for reading Proust's Classic one day. But unfortunatly this was not the book for me to accomplish that.
This literature critical account is way to difficult for me to really grap even a tiny bit of what the writer wants to tell. In a detailed analytical style, Bowie meticilously picks 'A la recherche du temps perdu' apart in an attempt to find higher meaning in the book then meets the eye.
I'm not sure for whom this book is written. Sometimes it feels like Bowie mostly wrote it for is own pleasure. But one thing is clear, one needs to be already pretty much engrossed with Proust and this Classic to have an inkling about what the writer goes on about. And then you'll probably better appreciate what Bowie wants to tell.
So, it was not the Introduction I was hoping for, although in the end, mainly by survey reading and skipping a lot literature technical argumentation, I managed to get a somewhat better idea about what Proust's Classic is all about.
I'm still not sure if I'll ever attempt to read it, but I am more intrigued about 'A la recherche du temps perdu' then I was before I went through 'Proust among the stars'. And although Bowie accomplished that, I don't feel comfortable rating the book. I'll leave that to readers who really understood what his ideas are all about.
In that way Proust's 'A la recherche du temps perdu' has always lingered as a book that I mabye should read, but up till now have not come around to reading. Especially as a Protagonist of Gay literature, he always pops up in a lot of books and movies I've seen.
I picked up this book to get an idea what the fuss is all about and maybe get some inspiration for reading Proust's Classic one day. But unfortunatly this was not the book for me to accomplish that.
This literature critical account is way to difficult for me to really grap even a tiny bit of what the writer wants to tell. In a detailed analytical style, Bowie meticilously picks 'A la recherche du temps perdu' apart in an attempt to find higher meaning in the book then meets the eye.
I'm not sure for whom this book is written. Sometimes it feels like Bowie mostly wrote it for is own pleasure. But one thing is clear, one needs to be already pretty much engrossed with Proust and this Classic to have an inkling about what the writer goes on about. And then you'll probably better appreciate what Bowie wants to tell.
So, it was not the Introduction I was hoping for, although in the end, mainly by survey reading and skipping a lot literature technical argumentation, I managed to get a somewhat better idea about what Proust's Classic is all about.
I'm still not sure if I'll ever attempt to read it, but I am more intrigued about 'A la recherche du temps perdu' then I was before I went through 'Proust among the stars'. And although Bowie accomplished that, I don't feel comfortable rating the book. I'll leave that to readers who really understood what his ideas are all about.
February 22, 2025
An excellent overview of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and made me excited to dive back in! Bowie is brilliant and I often felt stupid which is how I should be feeling while reading theory and critical literary analysis, it means I’m using my brain which is what I need to be doing more of — also shocked to read about the plot of these books which is something I missed in Swann’s Way…
February 17, 2025
“While reproducing in his book the din of technological modernity, he speaks of art as a therapy for the human passions and the only path we have towards the communication of souls” (317). Such an interpretation of Proust appears inevitable, even necessary, given the overwhelming magnitude of detail and observational complexity concerning the fabric of life itself in the renowned French author’s vaunted, tortuous “La recherche de temps perdue.”
A monumental feast for the mind and the soul, an exhaustive compendium of one human’s perennial cycle of emotions (consisting of countless universal experiences like those of envy, yearning, grief, derision, despair, awe, and ecstasy), inquisitive spirit, and anthropological mode of deconstructing social life in all its kaleidoscopic variety, Proust’s staggering work on its face seems amorphous, an elusive and grandiose literary mine incapable of being pinned down or distilled in any meaningful sense.
Malcolm Bowie, staunch Proust scholar, emerges like a pearl diver from the tenebrous depths of Proust’s intricate brain as concretized by his colossal literary work and elucidates the fundamental themes that percolate within. Musing on love, politics, art, sex, memory, and death (among a host of other defining topics within Proust’s magnum opus), Bowie writes with a pedagogical elegance for dispensing probing insights and a well-trained critic’s flair for verbal flourish and zest.
Hurdling anachronistically throughout the meandering flow of life that Proust’s never ending novel represents, Bowie operates like a time traveler of sorts. He links seemingly vaguely related episodes and incidents with an alacrity and sharp vision that makes me question whether even Proust himself was cognizant of his own propensities as a writer.
Philosophical as much as it is fantastical, this gorgeous analytical companion to Proust’s great work serves as a potent, all-encompassing piece of writing. It sent electrifying jolts of pleasure down my spine, with its cogent tone, compelling theories, and sagacious conclusions. Departing this book felt as agonizing as awakening from a pleasant dream, one in which rather than defying the logical order of the universe, the sequence of events that transpires conforms to the fundamental principles of reality to satisfying effect. Proust, a God-like writer concerned with the substance of life at its most rudimentary yet profound, utilized the vehicle of writing as a medium for exploring the deepest crevasses and psychological fissures that define and give human life — in all its infuriating opaqueness and whirlwind of constant flux — abundant meaning.
Beautiful, transformative, and invigorating, there is nothing that dares to eclipse the sheer vitality and depth of Proust’s work. We can thank Bowie for his meticulous contributions in illuminating this transcendent work and helping to nourish readers’ appetites for contemplating existence and its myriad contradictions, complexities and charms. The most sublime work of art is life itself.
A monumental feast for the mind and the soul, an exhaustive compendium of one human’s perennial cycle of emotions (consisting of countless universal experiences like those of envy, yearning, grief, derision, despair, awe, and ecstasy), inquisitive spirit, and anthropological mode of deconstructing social life in all its kaleidoscopic variety, Proust’s staggering work on its face seems amorphous, an elusive and grandiose literary mine incapable of being pinned down or distilled in any meaningful sense.
Malcolm Bowie, staunch Proust scholar, emerges like a pearl diver from the tenebrous depths of Proust’s intricate brain as concretized by his colossal literary work and elucidates the fundamental themes that percolate within. Musing on love, politics, art, sex, memory, and death (among a host of other defining topics within Proust’s magnum opus), Bowie writes with a pedagogical elegance for dispensing probing insights and a well-trained critic’s flair for verbal flourish and zest.
Hurdling anachronistically throughout the meandering flow of life that Proust’s never ending novel represents, Bowie operates like a time traveler of sorts. He links seemingly vaguely related episodes and incidents with an alacrity and sharp vision that makes me question whether even Proust himself was cognizant of his own propensities as a writer.
Philosophical as much as it is fantastical, this gorgeous analytical companion to Proust’s great work serves as a potent, all-encompassing piece of writing. It sent electrifying jolts of pleasure down my spine, with its cogent tone, compelling theories, and sagacious conclusions. Departing this book felt as agonizing as awakening from a pleasant dream, one in which rather than defying the logical order of the universe, the sequence of events that transpires conforms to the fundamental principles of reality to satisfying effect. Proust, a God-like writer concerned with the substance of life at its most rudimentary yet profound, utilized the vehicle of writing as a medium for exploring the deepest crevasses and psychological fissures that define and give human life — in all its infuriating opaqueness and whirlwind of constant flux — abundant meaning.
Beautiful, transformative, and invigorating, there is nothing that dares to eclipse the sheer vitality and depth of Proust’s work. We can thank Bowie for his meticulous contributions in illuminating this transcendent work and helping to nourish readers’ appetites for contemplating existence and its myriad contradictions, complexities and charms. The most sublime work of art is life itself.
September 18, 2014
Wonderfully written literary criticism. The book itself has an almost artistic genius about it in it's own right. It is very complex and many of the ideas I found difficult to grasp at times. But you come away with a renewed insight into Proust's masterpiece and a healthy respect for the academic powers of Malcolm Bowie.
March 5, 2020
A True Masterpiece
A book that haunts your mind. It is as hard to put a handle in as Alberti e is for our narrator to possess.
A book that haunts your mind. It is as hard to put a handle in as Alberti e is for our narrator to possess.
December 23, 2025
A succinct and excellent analysis of the major themes of the text. Proust finds paradoxes in every sphere of human behaviour and activity, but sees these as opportunities to enrich and enhance his creative process. Art must embody the tragic and the comic, the noble and the ignoble, the sublime and the mundane. We seek happiness while knowing all along that our suffering is inextricably bound up with this search. Desires are like waves on a river that alternately flow from one bank to the opposite. We seek happiness while knowing all along that our suffering is inextricably bound up with this search. The overarching dynamic of his view is that our understanding of experience is never exhausted by either a Scientific or Artistic approach to description and explanation.
The precision and complexity of Proust’s ability to embody his concepts in extraordinary language is remarkable. Few writers have captured the “phenomenology of experience” and shown that language is the “house of Being” so beautifully.
The precision and complexity of Proust’s ability to embody his concepts in extraordinary language is remarkable. Few writers have captured the “phenomenology of experience” and shown that language is the “house of Being” so beautifully.
Want to read
August 11, 2011 tempsperdu.com praised this book glowingly. The title of the book isn't promising...I would probably have skipped this book when running my fingers along the Proust shelf at Barnes & Noble but...that's marketing I suppose.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews