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Proust's Way
A Field Guide to in Search of Lost Time
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by Roger Shattuck
W. W. Norton and Co.
Due/Published
July 2001, 288 pages,
paper
ISBN
0393321800
For any reader who has been humbled by the language, the density, or the sheer weight of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Roger Shattuck is a godsend. Winner of the National Book Award for Marcel Proust, a sweeping examination of Proust's life and works, Shattuck now offers a useful and eminently readable guidebook to Proust's epic masterpiece, and a contemplation of memory and consciousness throughout great literature. Here, Shattuck laments Proust's defenselessness against zealous editors, praises some translations, and presents Proust as a novelist whose philosophical gifts were matched only by his irrepressible comic sense. Proust's Way, the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship, will serve as the next generation's guide to one of the world's finest writers of fiction. Author Biography: Roger Shattuck taught for many years at Boston University and now resides in Vermont. He is the author of Candor and Perversion. |
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Review
“Forget the cork-lined room with the dallying aesthete. Proust lived in this world and wrote about it with fervor.” -- Roger Shattuck Roger Shattuck, the author of Proust’s Binoculars and Marcel Proust returns to the French author in this discussion of his classic novel, In Search of Lost Time. As Shattuck writes in his opening sentence he was motivated to write this study to correct some misapprehensions surrounding In Search of Lost Time and Proust. More precisely, even though the novel deals with motifs of time and recollection, the reminiscences are really stepping stones that lead Marcel to more essential and more durable mental states. Shattuck also debunks the myth of Proust as an aesthete, dedicated to art for art’s sake, rather he is critical of that stance in the novel and was more a social critic than a decadent. As well as clearing some things up, Shattuck’s brilliant critique of the novel reaffirms why it is read in the first place. Shattuck’s passion for the novel as well as his subtle and intelligent commentary reveals the power and meaning of Proust’s novel. The perfect guide. Also of interest:
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