Marcel Proust: A Life in 2017: Our Year of Reading Proust

May 19, 2014 Renato rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: all-stars, 2014, reviewed, proust

I never thought I'd be one to read and actually enjoy biographies. My intention approaching this one was merely informative and as means of research to understand better the blurred lines between Proust's and his narrator's life as I seem to be completely obsessed about his work. The whole concept of reading biographies just seemed to me something boring with too many details that probably wouldn't really interest me as I'm more to enjoy fiction, beautiful metaphors and analogies and well develo I never thought I'd be one to read and actually enjoy biographies. My intention approaching this one was merely informative and as means of research to understand better the blurred lines between Proust's and his narrator's life as I seem to be completely obsessed about his work. The whole concept of reading biographies just seemed to me something boring with too many details that probably wouldn't really interest me as I'm more to enjoy fiction, beautiful metaphors and analogies and well developed and fully realized characters. So add all that to the fact that Carter's bio on Proust is about eight hundred pages long (there are a lot of notes in the last portion of his book) and, of course, written in English. I approached it with the general plan of finishing in 2014, but I didn't want to let it become a chore as it started off real slow for me. But what did I know? I finished it before planned and already have another biography (James Joyce, by Richard Ellmann) lined up for January!

I already knew for certain that I would enjoy the book once Carter started talking about the Recherche era - to read about his conceiving of the project, his notebooks where he kept his ideas, names for places and characters he would use, scenes he knew he had do develop, his opinions about art and literature - but I feared I would struggle to get through everything else that came before that, which amounted for almost forty years of his life. It was like reading fiction that a friend recommends to you but advise that the first third will be difficult but that it'll eventually get your attention. However, this wasn't really the case and I didn't have to wait that long.

After the first few pages went on - mainly about Jeanne and Adrien's marriage - my interest grew bigger and bigger as I realized his big and ambitious project didn't simply materialize itself in front of Proust as an apparition and didn't come to him in a dream: it was born inside of him ever since his earliest days. Not only I enjoyed learning more about Proust's career and his development as a writer (his first stories, his articles and essays, Pleasures and Days, the Ruskin translations, his fear of not having talent and constant doubting himself), it was also very interesting to see the person he was becoming fuller before my eyes as the time was passing - not only the time it took me to actually read Carter's pages, these twenty or so days, but also the chronological times of Proust's life: his childhood, school years, military service, society figure and his devotion to his great task. It was fascinating to witness his germination and expansion, but it wasn't always amusing.

Carter manages to depict Proust as a real person so well that despite all my admiration and how fond I've grown of him because of his magnum opus, I can say that I probably would not be able to be his friend, to maintain a long lasting relationship with him or to exchange letters on a daily basis, as it was at the time their most common method of communication. I rolled my eyes repeatedly in countless accounts of episodes of his life because of how difficult a person he was, how demanding and overall simply too different from me. His manipulations and schemes simply go against my idea of friendship.

But even though I clearly felt antagonized by his apparent high maintenance ways, I, like his friends who constantly heard him speaking of his ill health and how he was going to die soon for more than a decade, through so many sickness and almost never feeling completely well, I felt the impact - even though all logic would suggest otherwise, of learning of his death, of reading how his last hours went on, who was there with him, the last words he spoke, the fat woman he saw in his room - of losing someone I have esteemed for so long. I rushed through the last twenty pages with my heart racing and with chills and feeling emotional while finishing his biography, as if finishing it would consummate his end, as if closing the book for the last time meant burying him, as if I had the power to not let it happen had I stopped reading it before the dreaded moment happened.

Intertwined with all of this, as all matters truly are, Carter also gives us great details of the Recherche 茅poque such as episodes from Proust's life that he adapted in the book - like his haunting relationship he had with his mother that was used for the narrator's mother and grandmother -, traces from acquaintances he used to form his characters (physically and psychologically) - Montesquiou and baron Doazan were used for the impossible baron de Charlus, for example, and the various sources he drew inspiration to form the glorious Mme. Verdurin. The seemingly endless process of writing and rewriting, the correcting of first, second, third and even more proofs and additions to the text that the writer went through - and made his publisher go through -, and the decisions on how to divide and name his volumes.

Other great aspect to read about was how his work greatly expanded from one volume to three, then five to seven and the absurd fact - it wasn't so absurd back then though as the writer had never really proven yet how he was capable of writing as well as he delivered - that Proust had actually to pay to publish Swann's Way and how, after its release, it gained such high acclaim that he had publishers to choose from and begging to have his subsequent volumes. Through Carter's words, it was possible to feel Proust's love and his devotion for his little book, his ideas for marketing his product and, ultimately, his wish of simply wanting to be read.

Rating: there isn't any other way to rate this fully well researched biography - which derived from countless sources to back up the author's interpretations on Proust's life and words, his letters and letters from those who knew him well - that never vowed to paint its subject with only the best colors, but above all was impartial, informative and true before anything else: 5 stars. ...more

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