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Marcel Proust: A Life

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This is a dangerous book. If you have not read In Search of Lost Time in all of its infamous 3000 pages and you pick up this book, beware. Chances are, like me, you will find yourself juggling this great biography, Vol 1. of the Search, and Roger Shattuck's Proust's "Way, A guide to In Search of Lost Time" all at the same time.

Carter's biography is the first comprehensive one in 40 years and is based on much new information not available in the Painter volumes of the late 50's and early 60's. I ordered this biography and it immediately got me hooked. Proust, in all his eccentricity (sometimes hilarious) comes off as a real and likeable person. He is certainly a different person than the one living in his corked lined room writing page after page describing the wallpaper in his room that Dr. Kaufman taught us about in my 1958 high school World Literature class.

At 800 pages, it at first appears to be a daunting read. What could be more boring than the life of an aristocratic French mama's boy never to earn more than a few Francs on his own until way past 30 years. It is hardly boring. Proust was an exceedingly complex person. (Aren't we all?) Proust was plagued by asthma that his doctors kept assuring him was psychosomatic in origin, and in some wisdom, he knew to be otherwise. Living at home totally supported by his mother and father, he lead an extravagant lifestyle, often leaving what amounted to $200.00 tips to the carriage driver. It was a salon society and Proust was a member of perhaps dozens. We tour the various salons and their status climbing members and hosts. In Carter's thorough biography we get to see the society of Proust in much the same way as he saw it.

Letters and more letters! This was the time and place of letter writers but, whew! Proust would write as many as three letters a day to his mother while living in the same house. Letters to friends, lovers, enemies. Gads, it hardly seems like there was time for anything else.

Some times the story of Proust becomes surreal. It appears that being a critic in this time in France was almost a death defying act. Trash a play or book and you were likely to be challenged to a duel. Well a sort of a duel, as by this time the duel was important but nobody was aiming to kill. Proust had his manhood challenged by a critic. Proust challenged the critic to a duel and it was accepted. The time and place was 9:00 am in a woods outside of Paris. Proust instructed his seconds to rearrange the time to 3:00 pm in the afternoon as 9:00 am was not a time when decent persons were up and about. Proust's bullet strucked the ground inches from his opponent indicating he was shooting to kill. Quite a dangerous mama's boy.

Carter handles Proust's sexuality in a refreshing and matter of fact way. Neither making him into a homosexual hero as some have done with Wilde -- though Wilde can take the blame for much of that himself -- nor treating him as some sort of sexual misfit. Sexuality permeated Proust's life and it often had no gender associated with it, he was often smitten with the women surrounding him as much as the men. Carter can be commended for his sensitive portrayal of this essential part of Proust's life.

If Proust is your interest, or if fin de siecle France is, this is a not to miss book. At 800 pages it is quite and investment in time -- it's a bargain in dollar per word! -- but if this era is your interest, it is well worth the investment.

William C. Carter's new biography of Marcel Proust is the finest yet. With a strong narrative line and a profound and sensitive understanding of the writer and his work, it carries us along like a great novel. Drawing on resources unavailable to George Painter (whose biography was for years the standard reference), Carter is able to fill in the gaps with entries from Proust's letters and those he received from friends and editors. Marcel Proust was almost certainly the pivotal literary figure between two centuries, a writer of great courage and humor, and it is to Carter's credit that now, as we stand on the edge of yet another century, Proust is seen to be as relevant to our age as he was to his own. This, certainly, will become the standard life of this very important writer.

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.

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.

Carter's Proust is as solid, readable, and absorbing as Ellmann's Joyce. While devouring Carter's text and endnotes too, I refer to maps and travel guides and continue to reread Proust's Proust. What a joy! I'm especially pleased with Carter's decision to lightly reference life to work (something I understand Tadie avoids in his biography, forthcoming in English). How could Proust's life be separated from his work or vice versa?

I wish Yale had encouraged inclusion of a few reference maps and period photographs. Perhaps in a second, expanded edition, which would be an excuse to regain Proust's time once again, even at some loss to my own.

After seeing the reviews here on Amazon, I eagerly picked up this book. Having loved the French language and all things French, I became curious about the Belle Epoque and the life of Marcel Proust. But still, would I be able to wade through 800 pages? The answer is a resounding yes and with ease. The author, William C. Carter, does a wonderful job of getting inside the head of Monsieur Proust. Proust's papers, including his voluminous correspondence, had only recently became available and certainly paved the way for the author to explore the psychology behind the man.

I had no idea how unusual Marcel Proust was; I only knew his work was a must read for anyone serious about literature. What I learned was Monsiour Proust lived his life as a total noncomformist. I found the stories that displayed his bizarre behavior completely endeared the man to me. He lived in torment yet lived his life in a singular fashion: was homosexual, was in the military during World War I, challenged someone to a duel, broke up with a boyfriend whom he can't bear to evict, the hypochondria, waking up in the late afternoon and going to bed in the morning, and the increasing drug use. Proust could be a very compassionate man - he tipped extravagantly, yet thought nothing of calling on an acquaintance at 3:00 a.m. with no previous warning.

Having read this book, I want to delve into The Great Work, and I know I won't be disappointed.

This is about a rich an experience that a biography can provide. And I say that from the perspective of someone that loves bios.

I read this at the same time as I read the first volume of proust. The result was perfect. I now feel almost on intimate terms with easily one of the richest, strangest, and most excellent prose writers in history. When I continue through the proust cycle, I have a sense of why, of context -- and that improves the experience (and possibly makes it possible -- I am not sure that I would appreciate or be able to grasp the fiction if I didn't have a bit more understanding of what kind of person wrote it and why. You have to admit, in the novels there are some lengthy spots in odette's drawing room or what have you ... to understand "the whole story" makes it more valuable to plow through.

The writer of this biography takes great strides to make the amazing story readable and colorful. The biography is NOT a chore to read, if you find the subject interesting. When I finished it, I was seriously, seriously moved. (hey, it was a hefty bio. long.)

A great biography, one of the very best I have read. This is helped by the fact that the subject was such a colorful, strange, phenomenon.