Swann at 100 / Swann à 100 ans ed. by Adam Watt (review)

Emerging from a stimulating international symposium held in December 2013 at the University of Exeter, at the end of a centenary year marked by numerous events celebrating the publication of Du côté de chez Swann, this volume of fifteen essays makes a rich and important contribution to Proust studies. The essay writers include Proust scholars of long standing as well as new researchers in the field. What is remarkable about this volume is the wealth of innovation shown and the diverse and fruitful approaches taken to Proust's capacious novel. After the Introduction, the book opens with an absorbing essay by world-renowned Proustian William C. Carter, which sheds fresh and fascinating light on the role of trees in the Proustian narrative, and points up the etymological link between living tree bark and the printed book. The essays that follow maintain this high standard of originality and insight. Thus, for example, Thomas Baldwin engages with Félix Guattari's critically overlooked long essay on Vinteuil's 'petite phrase'; Margaret E. Gray explores persuasively the slippages that characterize Swann's identity as fetishist; Adam Watt points to the significance of the relationship between Proust and his sensitive reader, Jacques Rivière. The influence of medicine on Proust's writing is thoughtfully explored in Anna Magdalena Elsner's essay on 'nervousness', and Marion Schmid continues her fascinating research on dance and the kinaesthetic body in Proust's work. Cynthia Gamble provides a useful spectrum of critical responses in 1913 to Du côté de chez Swann, and Proust's manipulation thereof. In a compelling close reading, Jennifer Rushworth reads Proust's novel against Reynaldo Hahn's lectures on singing. Brigitte Mahuzier provides a new interpretation of Albertine's famous disquisition on ice cream, and Erika Fülöp argues convincingly for the need to reconsider the role of the imperfect tense throughout the novel. All of the essays in this book merit attention and reward the reader by stimulating an urgent return to, and renewed appreciation of, Proust's novel. It is exciting to see such compelling evidence of the vibrancy of Proust studies in the USA, the UK, and France, a full century after the first volume of À la recherche du temps perdu was published.