William C. Carter

This is a 5-star biography. Marcel Proust was the strangest man I have ever encountered--in life or in literature, and throughout the first quarter or third of the biography, I found him so exasperating that I wasn't sure I could continue. Both he and his Belle Epoque era seemed so fussy, artificial, self-absorbed that I wanted to smack him and it, but I was on a mission to read the biography in preparation for tackling the novel that was his life's work.

At about the point where all of France became obsessed with the Dreyfus Affair, my sense of Proust began to soften. He was among the Dreyfusards who supported Dreyfus against the wholly trumped up charges against him, when the lines between the anti-semites and militarists and those who stood against them and for justice began to emerge. There was a moral hook to hang one's hat on. It also became clearer that, ultimately, Proust's sympathies would not lie with the socialites and aristocrats who so enchanted him as a very young man. These factors opened a way for me to begin to understand Proust. He was rich but not an apologist for aristocracy. He was not a dogmatist and was not to write in support of a political or social ideal. He was, it turns out, a mirror and an author who sought, above all, to portray the truth of human souls as he uncovered those truths in his hyper-attentive experience of others. As his life continued he became only more of an eccentric, a piece of work, both challenging and adored by most who knew him. As he spent most of his later life sick and in bed--seeming like the most intransigent of hypochondriacs (and not just to me), he turned himself inside out, he poured himself out, he quite literally gave his life to his book.

Some of Proust's eccentricities were amusing. Here’s a quotation from the biography (p. 712), from around 1920, when Proust was awarded the Prix Goncourt. It made me laugh out loud:

"Jean Binet-Valmer, a conservative critic and militarist, praised elements of Proust’s work but thought it was “prewar”. He would have favored giving the Prix Goncourt to Swann’s Way in 1913 but blamed the Académie Goncourt for passing over Dorgelés’ patriotic novel for one whose morality appeared suspect. Proust wrote Binet-Valmer that he was eager to read Dorgelés’ novel once his sight improved: “Since I have not been well enough to go see an optometrist, I’m going to buy all kinds of glasses, and if I succeed in finding the right lenses, I will read ... Les Croix de Bois.”

He had indeed refused to get out of bed to see an eye doctor and directed his house-keeper to buy a lot of glasses from which he would try to find one that would provide the correction he needed. His response to Binet-Valmer also contains, between the lines, a jab at and dismissal of both the criticism and the other novel. For all his weird ways, Proust was strong: not the servant of himself (or others) but always and only of his great novel.

Carter has written a great, exhaustive (but not exhausting!) biography. He brought me around to find more sympathy for Proust. Proust's behavior was often exasperating and infuriating to those around him. And yet he was loved. It's harder to see that side of him. What was it? His courtesy, his brilliance, his kindness, eventually his manifest genius as his novel was published in stages? I don't know what it was, but the evidence is clear from the letters, the attention, and the behavior of his friends, family, and retainers. And so, the story of his death was achingly sweet and painful. Man Ray took a photo of him on his death bed and James Joyce apparently showed up at his funeral. And A La Recherche du Temps Perdu has made him immortal.
… (mais)

I'm very much enjoying the insights in this book, but I have a problem with the frequent, lengthy quotes --mostly from In Search of Lost Time but also from other sources -- that are written in the original French and are never translated. I can read a fair amount of French, but unfortunately my vocabulary is not always quite up to the level presented here. Since these quotes are such a big part of the book, this has been frustrating, though if I would just remember to keep a French-English dictionary handy every time I pick up the book, the problem would be alleviated.

Despite this issue, the book has been a fantastic read. I have learned so much I didn't know about ISOLT and I recommend it to any Proust lover. Even if you don't know any French there is so much to be learned here. But if you are fluent in French? Then it's a 5-star book.… (mais)

Carter's giant of a book doesn't offer too much in the way of analysis of the novels themselves, but in terms of it being a straight bio of someone who spent the last 15 years of their life in bed, up to the eyeballs in barbiturates, I'm surprised at the momentum it builds and how easy it is to read. Padding his youth out with a series of slightly kitsch asides about scraps that'd one day end up in the novel isn't the most auspicious start, but thankfully he knocks it off once he's got something to sink his teeth into. Excellent stuff - think I lost patience with the subject sooner than I did the book (turns out Proust could be an annoying shit towards the end of his life).… (mais)