Remembrance of Things Past Combray

At last brought to the U.S., the best-selling comics adaptation of the great classic of French literature that scandalized the French establishment as reported on the front page of the New York Times! Step back into a world of insightful reflection as Proust is brought back, through the legendary magic of the smell of a madeleine, to his youth in a small town of France.

Adult/High School-In 1998, the first of Heuet's well-researched volumes adapting Proust's novel to graphic-novel format reached publication in France. Now, it is available to American readers, who will be delighted to find that the wait paid off. Johnson's English renderings of the Proustian prose to which Heuet remained faithful in both his dialogue balloons and narrative panels maintain the tone, pacing, and spirit of the original work. The color illustrations use clear line and are well informed by the research into the appearances of Proust's material world of turn-of-the-century France. In this volume, the narrator is a young boy living in the middle-class comfort of his ancient relatives' country home in Combray. The household is rife with secrets, imagined secrets, and self-dramatizing, while the neighborhood includes secrets in the way of M. Swann, the church, an uncle who entertains the wrong sort of female company, and other folks. Heuet's rendition will bring Proust new audiences as well as readers invited back by this visual taste of the fabled madeleine. This is no dumbing down of great literature, but rather a great riff and interpretive play on the original.

Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

When this, the first in a proposed 12-volume comic-strip version of Remembrance of Things Past, appeared in France in 1998, the first printing sold out despite scathing reviews. Illustrator Heuet, an advertising executive, calls the project an "effort to democratize Proust," and on that level it can hardly be faulted. Heavily reliant on massive direct extracts from the novel's text, the adaptation is dutiful enough to impart a working knowledge of Proust that obviates actually reading him. It is rather a Classics Illustrated treatment for culture snobs, and its literalness prevents it's being good literature. Furthermore, Heuet's standard Eurocomics draftsmanship, which renders characters with near-iconic simplicity (young Marcel resembles an enervated Tintin) ensures that it isn't good comics, either. A more imaginative visualization of its source, like that of filmmaker Raoul Ruiz in Time Regained, still might have displeased Proust purists, but it might have better exploited the strengths of the comics medium. Still, the audacity of Heuet's effort guarantees it a large audience of curiosity seekers, at least for the first installment. Gordon Flagg
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