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Proust at the Majestic: The Last Days of the Author Whose Book Changed Paris

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The first part of the book is a fascinating examination of the guest list at a famous party given by Sydney and Violet Schiff at the Majestic Hotel in Paris near the end of Proust's life. Proust was one of the guests; so was James Joyce, although they apparently had little of substance to discuss. The party section is a bit tedious, if only because my expectation was to learn more about Proust from the outset. Once I finished the book, however, I felt that it was one of the best on Proust that I have read, probing his relationships with others as he finished his great work. I liked Ronald Hayman's biography of Proust for its examination of his creative process and the use of involuntary memory. This book is a good companion to Hayman's.

I had high hopes for this book. It sounded as if it would be full of juicy anecdotes about colorful people at a brilliant time to be in Paris. However, I soon learned that it fell into the category of my least favorite kind of book: the one you can't read for content because there are so many glaring errors jumping at you off the page. The author uses "whom" incorrectly too many times. He constantly spells "Huysmans" as "Huysman." The actress Rejane shows up once as Rejanne. (I can't get my accent marks to work today, sorry.) There are some impossible verb tense shifts which had me checking to make sure English is not a second language for him. He even manages to refer once to "La Prisonniere" with a "Le." The irony is that in an afterwords, he thanks people for helping him correct his grammar. One can only imagine what the original manuscript looked like.

Readers in search of interesting anecdotes will find a few good ones scattered here and there. Some of the quoted epigrams are, indeed, highly quotable. I especially enjoyed reading the menu of the dishes served at this dinner. I even reread those pages more than once. The best part of the book is the detailed description of Proust's death, his funeral, and the procession through Paris to the cemetery. I kept thinking this would be a wonderful Masterpiece Theatre teleseries... to have the most celebrated names of the Modernist movement at the same dinner talking to each other. But the gathering seems to have been more of a stunt...a photo-op with no cameras present.

I was willing to go along with the author on most things until he lost me early on page 57 with the following statement: "...but some passages in 'Temps perdu' seem distinctly autobiographical." Gosh!--(sarcasm button switched to high) do you really think so? That's really going out on a limb.

The pretext for this chatty meditation on Proust's final year was a 1922 dinner at the Hotel Majestic in Paris to celebrate a new production at the Ballets Russe. Hosted by an English couple who knew the players, it put Proust, Diaghilev, Picasso, Stravinsky, and Joyce in one place at one time--to little effect. Proust exchanged only brief pleasantries with the charm-free Joyce: on this night, the fictive planets of Dublin and Paris did not even sideswipe.

This book is actually quite Proustian: shapeless, baggy chitchat, always entertaining and sometimes informative, about Proust's world and work, especially toward the end. In his cork-lined sickroom, Proust was engulfed by newspapers, manuscripts, opiates, and café au lait. Few were allowed in, and fewer still occasioned a change of pajamas. He finished drafting the whole of his long novel but was unable to correct the final volumes, which were edited by his brother and published after Proust's death.

The key controversy nowadays is how gay Proust was (or how he was gay) and how gay he made his fictional world by contrast. A better account of this will be found in William Carter's "Proust in Love," which really delivers the dirt. Feast on Carter first, then this book will go down as smoothly as a flute of dessert champagne.