Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time: A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past

by Patrick Alexander

lover lived,

prescience

As the duchess observes, society is no longer exclusive: “Nowadays one finds all the people one has spent one’s life trying to avoid, on the pretext that they’re

Marcel Proust, the author, was not only the son of a doctor but he also had access to the agonized notes his mother had made during the death of her

am never satisfied until I have touched

Oscar Wilde, was not only imprisoned and disgraced, but he died in exile,

broken man.

this sentence is also noteworthy as being the longest ever written by Proust—and probably by anyone, in any language. I quote just the first 140 words of the 942-word total.

The passage is also noteworthy for the way that Proust associates and compares the position of Jews and homosexuals in society, suggesting that both are persecuted but

shameful minorities.

captive and needing to get away. Finally, he abandoned Proust and escaped to