Marcel Proust: OVERLOOK ILLUSTRATED LIVES - Softcover

Caws, Mary Ann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1585676489 ISBN 13: 9781585676484

Publisher: Overlook Books, 2005

Synopsis

Traces the life and accomplishments of the twentieth century novelist, noting his never-ending observation of the world that influenced his fictional characterizations, artistic works, and daily routines within his elite social circle. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author:

Mary Ann Caws is distinguished professor of English, French, and comparative literature at the City University of New York. She is the author of many books, including another title in the Overlook Illustrated Lives series, Virginia Woolf.

From Booklist:

The genius of Marcel Proust strains the limits of a visually oriented capsule biography. But in the latest addition to Overlook's Illustrated Lives series, Caws manages to capture the greatest novelist of the twentieth century in just over 100 pages of revealing episodes and haunting photographs. With lucid economy, Caws situates Proust--"the little man with the great eyes"--in the complex social world that he transmuted into the luminous artistry of A la recherche du temps perdu. A few shrewdly detailed scenes serve to contrast the many selves that coalesced--simultaneously or successively-- in Proust's multifaceted personality: the elegant socialite who dwindled into invalidism; the bold duelist who curried favor with political foes; the homosexual sensualist who platonically entranced beautiful women; the wealthy aesthete who hoped to write for the masses. At the integrative center of this baffling life, Caws locates a powerful imagination obsessed with the capacity of memory to transcend and redeem time's losses. A little book sure to draw readers into much bigger ones: the fuller Proust studies listed in Caws' bibliography--and, of course, Proust's own masterpiece. Bryce Christensen
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About this edition

• Publisher: Overlook Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1585676489
• ISBN 13: 9781585676484
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112