From the Bookshelf of The Year of Reading Proust…

Marcel Proust

Edmund White

Discussion: Preliminary Reading

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Preliminary Reading

Edmund White's "Proust"
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last updated Dec 07, 2014 08:11PM

William Carter's Proust Bio
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Sep 26, 2012 David rated it liked it · review of another edition

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I love Proust, but I typically do not enjoy reading biographies. Perhaps it is because, like Proust, I mostly disagree with Sainte-Beuve's opinion that an artist's art is great if his corresponding life is great, or perhaps it is because the life which I am most interested in is simply my own. I saw White's biography of Proust and it's brevity won my approval - "I can give a couple of hours to the general life of Proust, after all I've devoted months to his semi-autobiographical-novel-epic anywa I love Proust, but I typically do not enjoy reading biographies. Perhaps it is because, like Proust, I mostly disagree with Sainte-Beuve's opinion that an artist's art is great if his corresponding life is great, or perhaps it is because the life which I am most interested in is simply my own. I saw White's biography of Proust and it's brevity won my approval - "I can give a couple of hours to the general life of Proust, after all I've devoted months to his semi-autobiographical-novel-epic anyway." I do not regret this assessment, although I already knew most of the content of his life from a skimming of wikipedia.

White's assessment of Proust is basically that of the artist-invalid-dandy, but what irked me is the almost obsessive coverage of Proust's life as a homosexual. While is mask of homophobia, scarcely covering his open-secret life as a homosexual, is interesting and entertaining to a degree, it seemed to me that White dwelled on this aspect of Proust to self-indulgent ends. Like the claustrophobic and suffocating smallness of the gay community already, White's interest in Proust seems as much devoted to his gayness as to his greatness.

Furthermore, where not explicitly devoting his attention to Proust's sexual proclivities (I might have lived without the multiple quotations of Proust's endorsing masturbating with other men - seemed gratuitous), there is an almost self-important game of "unlock the roman à clef" or "Whose who: Proust edition." While of course, even Proust admits to much of his novel-epic being extracted and distilled fragments of his real life, it is perhaps best to leave the interpretations of his characters to readers of his novel and students of his life, rather than extending the biographer's own (albeit informed) hypotheses. I can appreciate the stories of Proust's romantic adventures without the aggrandizing statements of "this man is the basis for Albertine... of Gilberte... this woman and this woman form the compound of Mme de Guermantes.." etc.

While an author's life, like Hemingway's for example, may exceed even his stories in novelistic flair, Proust's is a rather pale mirror help up to his own work. He was an invalid, kept inside almost all his adult life, protected from the catalysts of his asthmatic attacks, devoted solely to his work in his late years, before his early death at the age of 51. His younger and formidable years are constituted largely with dandyism, social climbing, and doomed love affairs or enamorment of his heterosexual male friends. What transforms Proust's rather mundane existence into art are not the people (for he did not value friendships), nor the events which constituted the life seen, but rather the inner-workings of his mind which constitute and elevate the life unseen. ...more

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