A Publisher's Weekly Most Anticipated Book of 2022 Living and Dying with Marcel Proust is the result of a lifetime's reading of, reflection on, and love for Proust's masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. One of the masterpieces of twentieth-century fiction, Proust's In Search of Lost Time describes a unique journey, combining elements drawn from the timeless narratives of great expectations and lost illusions. In this lively and entertaining book, Christopher Prendergast traces that journey as it unfolds on an arc defined by the polarities in his title: living and dying. At once a careful contemplation Proust's masterwork and an exploration of the rich sensory and impressionistic tapestry of a lived world, Living and Dying with Marcel Proust addresses such disparate Proustian obsessions as insomnia, food, digestion, color, addiction, memory, breath and breathing, breasts, snobbism, music, and humor. Entertaining and erudite, Prendergast's book will surely become the companion for all readers either about to reembark on Proust's three-million-word journey or setting out for the first time.

Novels by Proust, Woolf, and Nabokov have been read as expressions of a desire to transcend time. Hägglund gives them another reading entirely: fear of time and death is generated by investment in temporal life. Engaging with Freud and Lacan, he opens a new way of reading the dramas of desire as they are staged in both philosophy and literature.

Self --Time --Art --Politics --Morality --Sex --Death.

An accessible, irreverent guide to one of the most admired—and entertaining—novels of the past century: Rememberance of Things Past. There is no other guide like this; a user-friendly and enticing entry into the marvelously enjoyable world of Proust. At seven volumes, three thousand pages, and more than four hundred characters, as well as a towering reputation as a literary classic, Proust’s novel can seem daunting. But though begun a century ago, in 1909, it is in fact as engaging and relevant to our times as ever. Patrick Alexander is passionate about Proust’s genius and appeal—he calls the work “outrageously bawdy and extremely funny”—and in his guide he makes it more accessible to the general reader through detailed plot summaries, historical and cultural background, a guide to the fifty most important characters, maps, family trees, illustrations, and a brief biography of Proust. Essential for readers and book groups currently reading Proust and who want help keeping track of the huge cast and intricate plot, this Reader’s Guide is also a wonderful introduction for students and new readers and a memory-refresher for long-time fans.

From the author of the acclaimed Queen of Fashion--a brilliant look at the glittering world of turn-of-the-century Paris through the first in-depth study of the three women Proust used to create his supreme fictional character, the Duchesse de Guermantes. Geneviève Halévy Bizet Straus; Laure de Sade, Comtesse de Adhéaume de Chevigné; and Élisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, the Comtesse Greffulhe--these were the three superstars of fin-de-siècle Parisian high society who, as Caroline Weber says, "transformed themselves, and were transformed by those around them, into living legends: paragons of elegance, nobility, and style." All well but unhappily married, these women sought freedom and fulfillment by reinventing themselves, between the 1870s and 1890s, as icons. At their fabled salons, they inspired the creativity of several generations of writers, visual artists, composers, designers, and journalists. Against a rich historical backdrop, Weber takes the reader into these women's daily lives of masked balls, hunts, dinners, court visits, nights at the opera or theater. But we see as well the loneliness, rigid social rules, and loveless, arranged marriages that constricted these women's lives. Proust, as a twenty-year-old law student in 1892, would worship them from afar, and later meet them and create his celebrated composite character for The Remembrance of Things Past.

A detailed analysis of Proust's masterpiece, aimed at students coming to the work for the first time.

A New York Times Editors’ Choice A Publisher’s Weekly Most Anticipated Book of 2022 Living and Dying with Marcel Proust is the result of a lifetime’s reading of, reflection on, and love for Proust’s masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. One of the masterpieces of twentieth-century fiction, Proust’s In Search of Lost Time describes a unique journey, combining elements drawn from the timeless narratives of great expectations and lost illusions. In this lively and entertaining book, Christopher Prendergast traces that journey as it unfolds on an arc defined by the polarities in his title: living and dying. At once a careful contemplation Proust’s masterwork and an exploration of the rich sensory and impressionistic tapestry of a lived world, Living and Dying with Marcel Proust addresses such disparate Proustian obsessions as insomnia, food, digestion, color, addiction, memory, breath and breathing, breasts, snobbism, music, and humor. Entertaining and erudite, Prendergast’s book will surely become the companion for all readers either about to reembark on Proust’s three-million-word journey or setting out for the first time. “Splendid... Reading [it] feels like, say, seeing all of Venice in a gondola, seated beside a patient, smiling, all-knowing art historian.”—Edmund White, The New York Times Book Review