Proust Among the Stars - Hardcover

Bowie, Malcolm

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231114907 ISBN 13: 9780231114905

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1999

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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.

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 this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0231114907
• ISBN 13: 9780231114905
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352