Proust

The Search

Benjamin Taylor

$39.95

Hardback

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English

Yale University
27 October 2015

Biography; Biography: literary

Series: Jewish Lives

"From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series, an arresting new study of the life, times, and achievement of one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century

“Taylor’s endeavor is not to explain the life by the novel or the novel by the life but to show how different events, different emotional upheavals, fired Proust’s imagination and, albeit sometimes completely transformed, appeared in his work. The result is a very subtle, thought-provoking book.”—Anka Muhlstein, author of Balzac’s Omelette and Monsieur Proust’s Library

Marcel Proust came into his own as a novelist comparatively late in life, yet only Shakespeare, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky were his equals when it came to creating characters as memorably human. As biographer Benjamin Taylor suggests, Proust was a literary lightweight before writing his multivolume masterwork In Search of Lost Time, but following a series of momentous historical and personal events, he became—against all expectations—one of the greatest writers of his, and indeed any, era.

This insightful, beautifully written biography examines Proust’s artistic struggles—the “search” of the subtitle—and stunning metamorphosis in the context of his times. Taylor provides an in-depth study of the author’s life while exploring how Proust’s personal correspondence and published works were greatly informed by his mother’s Judaism, his homosexuality, and such dramatic events as the Dreyfus Affair and, above all, World War I. As Taylor writes in his prologue, “Proust’s Search is the most encyclopedic of novels, encompassing the essentials of human nature. . . . His account, running from the early years of the Third Republic to the aftermath of World War I, becomes the inclusive story of all lives, a colossal mimesis. To read the entire Search is to find oneself transfigured and victorious at journey’s end, at home in time and in eternity too.”

About Jewish Lives:

Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity. Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences. Subjects are paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present.

In 2014, the Jewish Book Council named Jewish Lives the winner of its Jewish Book of the Year Award, the first series ever to receive this award.

More praise for Jewish Lives:

""Excellent."" –New York Times

""Exemplary."" –Wall Street Journal

""Distinguished."" –New Yorker

""Superb."" –The Guardian"

By: Benjamin Taylor
Imprint: Yale University
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 146mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 399g
ISBN: 9780300164169
ISBN 10: 0300164165
Series: Jewish Lives
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 27 October 2015
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Benjamin Taylor is a founding member of the Graduate Writing Program faculty at the New School and the author or editor of six previous books, including The Book of Getting Even and Saul Bellow: Letters.

Reviews for Proust: The Search

Those who found reading Proust too grand an undertaking over the years because of distractions and deficiencies of their own, might well rush to reconsider after confronting this dazzlingly elegant biography. -Philip Roth -- Philip Roth Taylor's endeavor is not to explain the life by the novel or the novel by the life but to show how different events, different emotional upheavals, fired Proust's imagination and, albeit sometimes completely transformed, appeared in his work. The result is a very subtle, thought-provoking book. -Anka Muhlstein, author of Balzac's Omelette and Monsieur Proust's Library -- Anka Muhlstein A sensitive study of literature's favorite neurasthenic ... Readers of Proust will be fascinated to find clues as to who his characters were in real life, and they should be moved to appreciation by Taylor's assessment of Proust's accomplishment ... A densely packed and rewarding book. -Kirkus Reviews Kirkus Reviews