The Book, the Memories and the Man

Abstract

There are three ideas about Marcel Proust which it is useful to discuss before trying to bring out the full range of his achievements as a novelist. The first, which is well founded, is that Proust was a highly prolific writer whose major and most important work, A la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27), best known in English as Remembrance of Things Past, is very long. The second, which is not true, is that his book is mainly about the experience of involuntary memory, exemplified by the moment in which his whole past came flooding back to him when he tasted a mouthful of tea and cake. The third, which is potentially misleading, is that A la recherche du temps perdu is principally to be admired for its poetic recreation of the Narrator’s childhood and early adolescence.