Proust Among the Stars [Hardcover]

Malcolm Bowie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1999

A matchless close reading of Remembrance of Things Past and a lesson in how to read the great books profitably and pleasurably. 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 -- line after line, page after page.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The best general study of Proust's 3,000-page work." -- Times Literary Supplement

"Genteel and meditative." -- Lingua Franca

"Bowie can say more in three sentences than many a scholar in a belabored chapter... This is criticism motivated by intellectual joy, creatively sustained by felicities of expression." -- Victor Brombert, Los Angeles Times

"Bowie is one of our best living critics.... [His] moving wit sends his reader straight back to the text itself. Which is what criticism should do." -- A. S. Byatt, London Daily Telegraph

"Each [chapter] challenges traditional interpretations of Proust's handling of these themes, and deepens one's pleasure in and understanding of the novel.... Excellent." -- Guardian

"A searching attempt to grasp the nature of Proust's vast project.... Brilliant analyses." -- Times (London)

About the Author

Malcolm Bowie is Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at Oxford University and a Fellow of All Souls College. His previous books include Freud, Proust, and Lacan and Lacan: A Modern Master. He reviews regularly for the Times Literary Supplement, Guardian, London Review of Books, and the Times Higher Education Supplement.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (March 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231114907
• ISBN-13: 978-0231114905
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,967,037 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good companion book while reading Proust, July 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Proust Among the Stars (Hardcover)

There are many books about Proust. If you're just getting started and feeling overwhelmed, this book is helpful in sorting out the major themes in the book of art, politics, class, etc. Highly recommended.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To the stars and back, May 28, 2002

By 

"peterquinn2" (Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Proust Among the Stars (Hardcover)

Malcolm Bowie's Proust Among The Stars is one of the most appealing works of thematic criticism that I read in a long time. By concentrating on specific themes such as Self, Time, Art, Politics and Sex, Bowie explains in great detail how Proust in his novel treats these topics in their sublime aspects, but at the same time how the sublime is given a human habitation as it were. Bowie, with many fine textual examples draws our attention to how the profundity and profusion everywhere apparent in Proust's masterpiece, coexists with dispersal and loss. He explores the many ways in which Proust is able to embed his rich and allusive art firmly in the real world; how Proust's attention to the minutiae of everyday life is never lost within the plethora of the Proustian paragraph. In his chapter on Sex, Bowie explains how Proust creates in his central protagonist someone who is "by turns a Lothario and a spoiled child, a visionary and a pathological case, a hero of the speculative intellect and a paragon of self-defeating folly".

Excellent fare indeed and a book to read and reread.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Subtle, engaging, intelligent, non-pedantic Proust criticism, May 21, 2000

By 

Mark Calkins (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Proust Among the Stars (Hardcover)

Who ever thought thematic criticism could ever be so intellectually satisfying, delightful, insightful, and so damn well-written. Bowie writes with poise and passion. One of the best of recent Proust studies for any reader.