Customer Reviews

Marcel Proust (Penguin Lives)

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Someone at Penguin (James Atlas?) had a stroke of genius. The Penguin Lives series seems to takes its inspiration from seventeenth century writers like Izaak Walton and John Aubrey who churned out brief, engaging prose portraits of their contemporaries and other worthies. Readers know from the moment they pick up one of the Penguin Lives that they are not going to get a thorough-going, heavily annotated exploration of the person under scrutiny. They also know, when they check the page count, that they will not stall out midway and that they can easily finish it on a long weekend at the beach. The choice of "celebrity authors" to do the story-telling is also intriguing. Edmund White, for instance, may not have the final say on all things Proustian, but as a gay novelist and biographer of Jean Genet, we can be pretty confident that he will be forthright and honest when discussing Proust's sexuality and careful, appreciative, and insightful when discussing In Search of Lost Time. In fact, the balance White strikes in his discussion of the man and the novel is quite impressive. In contrast to many modern biographies that wallow in unflattering detail and leave the reader wondering how the subject ever managed to become a person worthy of being written about, White gives us a sense of what Proust was up against (personally and emotionally) without diminishing what he achieved. One piece of advice, if you do decide to buy this great little volume: Don't skip the bibliography. It's only nine pages long and White's descriptions of the books listed will point you toward some good reading (and away from some duds).

Edmund White's Proust is a superb model of stripped down biography. In a succinct and constantly illuminating appraisal of the writer as homosexual, White succeeds in making public what Proust was outwardly at such pains to conceal. Proust's outsidership--he was part Jewish, gay, a semi-invalid by way of chronic asthma, and an unctuously ingratiating social climber--were all necessary facets of his person, developed in the slow evolution of his genius.

White's elegant and incisive prose evident here in his evocation of Proust's characteristically neurotic obsessions allows us that rare opportunity of perceiving how one distinguished novelist writes about another. This is White's Proust, and so the conception is of value to literature. White succeeds in getting under Proust's skin, and by virtue of uncanny empathy reads his subject with the familiarity of one profoundly psychological writer resonating with another. White understands that 'Every autobiographical novel inevitably mixes harsh truths about its first-person hero with a bit of wish fulfilment.'

If Proust's forté was to apprehend the psychological building blocks out of which the twentieth-century was to be constructed, then he achieved this through what he called 'involuntary memory', or the unconscious. White is good on this crucial aspect of Proust, for it was the writer's facility to establish an interface between buried associations and their reappearance in the light of memory which was to prove the basis on which A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu was created.

That Proust delayed entry to his work, and assumed initially a secretive and avocational approach to writing, Jean Santeuil being the blueprint for the open-ended masterpiece to follow, was due in part to his fear that once he showed commitment to his work, his life would irretrievably change. White apprehends the problem with intuitive insightfulness, discerning that 'Like the man who supersititously refuses to write a will out of an acknowledged fear that by doing so he will soon be signing his death warrent, in the same way Proust fancied that so long as he failed to begin his life's work, his life would go on.'

White is fascinating on Proust's series of clandestine male lovers. If Marcel was adept at gender-bending for the sake of propriety in his novel - White points out that most of Marcel's female characters are 'boys in drag' - then his private life was equally complex. Proust conducted an intense affair with the musician Reynaldo Hahn in the years between 1894-96, and was to make Hahn the lifelong recipient of his gay confidences. White quotes Proust as writing to Hahn after the death of his secretary Alfred Agostinelli, to confide: 'I truly loved Alfred. It's not enough to say I loved him. I adored him.' And when Proust was to fall in love with a young man named Albert Nahmias, he was to go so far as to write: 'If I could only change my sex, face and age and take on the looks of a young and pretty woman so that I could kiss you with all of my heart.'

Proust was a neurotic obsessive who lived largely with the expectation of an early death. Even before Proust began work on Rememberance of Things Past, he was as White draws to our attention spending about £ 12,000 a year for medicines. By 1909 he had withdrawn from society in order to devote himself entirely to work and for the next thirteen years he immersed himself in the solitary labour of reinventing his life through supremely imaginative fiction.

White's streamlined life of Proust is a blueprint for good biography. Serious, vivacious, racy, its publication is a literary event.

JEREMY REED

When the dust settled after the Millennium lists of Best Books of the 20th Century, there was Marcel Proust's magnum opus Recherche le temps perdu at the head of the line. Though many of us struggled through all the volumes as a college assignment, fewer of us returned to the masterpiece, much less explored the ambiguitites of the author's life and times that afforded such a work. Well, here in easily digestible prose is a succinct history of a phenomenal writer (written by an equally phenomenal writer) that opens the door to more ventursome readers to explore the "Best of the 20th Century" writing. Edmund White distills all the facets of Proust's persona and what results is a fastidiously correct picture of a fertile imagination and man. How better to understand the turn of the century in all its multifaceted changes than to simply read this fine biography? Another work of seeming staggering proportions reduced to a gentle and absorbing read by one of our better authers writing today. Hats off!

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.

Hmm. I'm not sure what to make of this book. It's relatively brief (165 short pages), informative, well-written and easy to read. I'd read "Remembrance of Things Past" 15-20 years ago, but knew next-to-nothing of Proust himself. I was most interested in (1) his background, primarily his childhood; and (2) how it was possible that an unpublished author could get such a beast published. Edmund White addresses both issues to a degree (most satisfactorily on the second), but concentrates (not unreasonably, I guess) on people and events from Proust's life that make their way into the novel.

I found White's "Marcel Proust" to be enjoyable, but it mainly whetted my appetite for a more substantial biography. Perhaps that's part of the purpose of this series of books.

Edmund White, fresh from the success of his exhaustive yet never exhausting GENET, shows off his ability to condense and select in this brilliant first book in Penguin's Short Lives series. White's strength is his democratic hand, which seeks not to intimidate and mystify but to make clear. The action of his prose takes place only afterward, when whole sentences come back to the reader--only White can make a philosophical concept so vivid, so familiar that readers will find themselves offering up his explanations intact, as if from involuntary memory. White has his faults: a joy in authoritative overstatements, an inability to resist a juicy if unreliable anecdote, and a gay liberationist agenda; but this is the personality of a great writer of our time examining a great writer of another. As scholarly as it is frivolous, as unforgettable as it is trivial, as universal as it is subjective. This is White at his best: far from the glittering abstruseness of Forgetting Elena, more approachable than his fascinating and grotesque autobiographical trilogy, focused on a great man with a fascinating life.

This is not a deep study on the great French writer's work, nor is it meant to be. However, it is a slim, fascinating and surprisingly penetrating insight into the life and writing of Proust. This tale is consciously told from White's perspective touching on issues and aspects about Proust's life he is interested in. This includes the way the world perceives Proust & interprets his work, how his homosexual status effected his work and public persona, the interaction between his writing & life and citing the most interesting work that has been done preceding Proust's life. It follows the basic time line of Proust's life and is related in a gossipy though highly intelligent fashion. The most interesting aspect of the book is the way it examines the way he is able to historically place the opinion of homosexuality at the time with other writers and the politics of the time and explain how it effected Proust's life. It relates how his life was really guided by a need for love and approval and how this was reflected in his relationships with his mother & lovers and filtered into his writing. The border between fictionalization and wishful thinking is finely tread in Proust's work because of this. White also gives an interesting insight into the way Proust worked as a craftsman playing with and mixing the genres of novel and the essay. Though this book touches on many interesting academic issues such as this, it is a very entertaining read and can be read easily by anyone who is a large fan of Proust's work or a complete novice. It is admirable White is able to touch on aspects of the writer's life that have not be ever deeply explored before.

Too many biographers try to explain the life of the author by the content of their works. If you have not read them all, you are lost. Mr. White, fortunately, takes the opposite route. He gives us a clear and thorough history of Proust's life and then connects it to his writings. He fashions a monument of Proust the human being and helps us to much better understand his books. It is a fascinating biography and can be enjoyed even if one never read "Remembrance of Things Past". But this biography will make you want to read it.

Edmund White's brief (156 pages) biography of Proust reveals few details not found in the longer works by Carter, Painter or Tadié. But it differs from these other books by having been written by an accomplished novelist and a gay man, two qualities that help the author provide new insights into Proust.

White on Proust the homosexual:

At the same time that Proust was eager to make love to other young men, he was equally determined to avoid the label "homosexual." Years later he would tell André Gide that one could write about homosexuality even at great length, so long as one did not ascribe it oneself. This bit of literary advice is coherent with Proust's general closetedness-a secretiveness that was all the more absurd since everyone near him knew he was gay. (46)

This suggestion that Proust was a homosexual having an affair with the young Daudet could not be allowed to pass by unchallenged. Three days later the two men, standing at a distance of twenty-five yards, fired in the air above each other's heads: Proust reported that his bullet fell just next to Lorrain's foot. Proust showed a surprising coolness under fire. Perhaps he was proudest of the cachet of his seconds, the painter Jean Béraud and a celebrated he-man duelist, Gustave de Borda. No one remarked on the absurdity of one homosexual "accusing" another of being homosexual, which led to a duel to clear the "reputation" of the "injured" party....To be labeled a homosexual in print (as opposed to living a homosexual life in private or discreetly among friends) was social anathema, even in Paris, until the very recent past. (75-76)

Bibesco remembered that at one of his mother's salons he had first met Proust, whom he later characterized by saying he had eyes of "Japanese lacquer" and a hand that was "dangling and soft." When he subsequently instructed Marcel on how to shake hands with a virile grip, Proust said, "If I followed your example, people would take me for an invert." Which is just an indication of how devious the thinking of a homosexual of the period could become-a homosexual affects a limp handshake so that heterosexuals will not think he is a homosexual disguising himself as a hearty hetero-whereas in fact he is exactly what he appears to be: a homosexual with a limp handshake. (82)

To be sure, almost no one who did not know him thought that Proust himself was homosexual. The Narrator is one of the few unambiguous heterosexuals in the book; almost all the other characters turn out to be gay. After Proust's death several essays congratulated him on his "courage" in braving such disgusting corners of experience, as though Proust were a moral Jean-Henri Fabre-the pioneering entomologist-and his homosexual characters were insects. (150)

White on Proust the writer:

But Proust had more personal objections to Ruskin. Sesame and Lilies is about the importance of reading as a way of improving the lot of the working class; whereas Proust prefaced his translation with one his most moving texts, "On Reading," about the magical power of reading to awaken the imagination of a child-an end in itself. (79)

As the trajectory of this single character [Charlus] demonstrates, Proust had learned a method of presentation that falls midway between that of Dickens and that of Henry James. Dickens assigns his characters one or two memorable traits, sometimes highly comic, which they display each time they make an appearance; James, by contrast, is so quick to add nuances to every portrait that he ends up effacing them with excessive shading. Proust invented a way of showing a character such as Charlus in Dickensian bold relief at any given moment-Charlus as the enraged queen or, later, Charlus as the shattered King Lear. Yet by building up a slow composite of images through time, Proust achieves the same complexity that James had aimed at, though far more memorably. (109)

Proust esteemed Wagner's way of "spitting out everything he knew about a subject, everything close or distant, easy or difficult." This sort of fullness and explicitness he obviously preferred in literature as well, an amplitude he contrasted favorably to the pared-back reticence of the neo-classical style, as it was practiced by Anatole France or even André Gide. Still more important, Wagner's opera Parsifal has been designated by many critics as the very template for Remembrance of Things Past, since both works trace the quest of a young man-in Parsifal, for the Holy Grail; and in Proust's book, for the secret of literature. (112)

Rather than distorting the proportions of the whole book, as some critics have complained, the introduction of Albertine actually fills an immense void, "since little dalliances without importance and fleeting flirtations are replaced by the violent, tragic grandeur of Racinian passion," as Proust's best and most recent biographer, Jean-Yves Tadié, writes. (129)

The apparently meandering prologue to the whole epic, "Combray," for instance, is actually something like a strict overture to an opera, in the sense that it announces and compresses all the successive themes. (141)

Proust was anti-intellectual and convinced that the domain of art, which is recollected experience, can never be tapped through reasoning or method alone; it must be delivered to us, fresh and vivid, through a process beyond the control of the intellect or willpower. Paradoxically, if Proust was anti-intellectual he was also profoundly philosophical, in that what he sought was not the accidents but the essence of any past event. Involuntary memory, by definition anti-intellectual, nevertheless refines away all the unnecessary details of a forgotten moment and retains only its unadorned core. (143)

Proust Reader

Clever, witty, and elegantly written, Edmund White's sketch of Proust's life will not satisfy--and is not meant to satisfy--those readers looking for a full-scale literary biography. (Then again, what were you expecting from a 150-page book?) Instead, this slim and tidy chapbook is a valuable introduction to Proust's seven-volume bildungsroman and will almost certainly allow readers to appreciate even more the wonders of "In Search of Lost Time." Briefly describing Proust's life and times, his family and friends, his literary predecessors, and the work's textual history, White's summary has just enough material to motivate readers to move on to the novel itself.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for an iconic gay author like White, the volume focuses on the open secret of Proust's sexuality, how this duality influenced his writing, and how Proust "inverted"--if you'll excuse the pun--certain characters by borrowing real-life friends (many of whom White identifies) and making them women rather than men in his novel. In the affair between Swann and Odette, for example, White sees echoes of "the alternating bouts of jealousy and reconciliation" between Proust and his lover Reynaldo Hahn; likewise, "a little bevy of handsome youths" whom Proust met on the beach became the gang of girls in the second volume. Some critics have criticized this emphasis on Proust's homosexuality as a misplaced, modern obsession, but I think it's a revealing perspective. His masterpiece is, after all, largely preoccupied with sexual relations, and it's hardly inappropriate to highlight people who are transposed from life's stage to the pages of a book--especially one as autobiographical as Proust's.

Having recently begun the third volume of "In Search of Lost Time," I regret that I had not read White's biographical outline first. Once I finished the book, I went back to the first two volumes and re-read passages I had missed or misunderstood the first time around. I think I would have understood and enjoyed the first two volumes even more, and this is true even in those occasional instances where I'm not sure I agree with White's interpretations--starting with his claim that "Proust's fame and prestige have eclipsed those" of writers such as Joyce, Woolf, and Faulkner. (Really, does literature have to be a competitive sport?) This little "life" provides just enough background and analysis to encourage rather than predispose Proust's modern-day readers.