Marcel Proust

The life of Marcel Proust strains the limits of a visually oriented short biography. But in the latest addition to Overlook's Illustrated Lives series, Caws manages to capture the greatest novelist of the twentieth century in just over 100 pages of revealing episodes and haunting photographs. With lucid economy, Caws situates Proust--"the little man with the great eyes"--in the complex social world that he transmuted into the luminous artistry of A la recherche du temps perdu. A few shrewdly detailed scenes serve to contrast the many selves that coalesced--simultaneously or successively-- in Proust's multifaceted personality: the elegant socialite who dwindled into invalidism; the bold duelist who curried favor with political foes; the homosexual sensualist who platonically entranced beautiful women; the wealthy aesthete who hoped to write for the masses. At the integrative center of this baffling life, Caws locates a powerful imagination obsessed with the capacity of memory to transcend and redeem time's losses. A little book sure to draw readers into much bigger ones: the fuller Proust studies listed in Caws' bibliography--and, of course, Proust's own masterpiece. Bryce Christensen

The Overlook Illustrated Lives series offers visual literary biographies, incisively and informatively written by leading experts, accompanied by photographs and illustrations that bring to life the author's world. Coinciding with the publication of the first all-new English translation of Proust's great work in more than seventy years, Marcel Proust vividly captures Proust's solitary genius and life of passionate observation, from his daily routines to the elite social circle that fascinated his youth.

The more than one hundred photos and illustrations, some previously unpublished, enable readers to share the celebrated author's sight-and how others saw him: Proust's favorite paintings, portraits of the people he was close to, sources for his fictional characterisations, copious illustrations of the theatrical events and exhibitions Proust attended with such enthusiasm, scores of the music he loved, his manuscripts, sketches, and the places dear to him and central to the great novel that was his life's work.

The genius of Marcel Proust strains the limits of a visually oriented capsule biography. But in the latest addition to Overlook's Illustrated Lives series, Caws manages to capture the greatest novelist of the twentieth century in just over 100 pages of revealing episodes and haunting photographs. With lucid economy, Caws situates Proust--"the little man with the great eyes"--in the complex social world that he transmuted into the luminous artistry of A la recherche du temps perdu. A few shrewdly detailed scenes serve to contrast the many selves that coalesced--simultaneously or successively-- in Proust's multifaceted personality: the elegant socialite who dwindled into invalidism; the bold duelist who curried favor with political foes; the homosexual sensualist who platonically entranced beautiful women; the wealthy aesthete who hoped to write for the masses. At the integrative center of this baffling life, Caws locates a powerful imagination obsessed with the capacity of memory to transcend and redeem time's losses. A little book sure to draw readers into much bigger ones: the fuller Proust studies listed in Caws' bibliography--and, of course, Proust's own masterpiece. Bryce Christensen

The Overlook Illustrated Lives series offers visual literary biographies, incisively and informatively written by leading experts, accompanied by photographs and illustrations that bring to life the author's world. Coinciding with the publication of the first all-new English translation of Proust's great work in more than seventy years, Marcel Proust vividly captures Proust's solitary genius and life of passionate observation, from his daily routines to the elite social circle that fascinated his youth.

The more than one hundred photos and illustrations, some previously unpublished, enable readers to share the celebrated author's sight-and how others saw him: Proust's favorite paintings, portraits of the people he was close to, sources for his fictional characterizations, copious illustrations of the theatrical events and exhibitions Proust attended with such enthusiasm, scores of the music he loved, his manuscripts, sketches, and the places dear to him and central to the great novel that was his life's work.