The Cambridge Introduction to Marcel Proust (review)

Since the publication of Malcolm Bowie's Proust Among the Stars in 1998, followed three years later by Richard Bales's Cambridge Companion to Proust, there seems to have been a renewed interest in Proust, not only in the UK but in France too, culminating in the publication in 2004 of the substantial Dictionnaire Marcel Proust. Even as Adam Watt's useful volume was going to press, new monographs, including the remarkable Proust, Class, and Nation by Edward Hughes, were still being completed. Watt's task was always going to be a difficult one, trying to keep up with the pace of current criticism (which he does very well, in Chapter 5) in order to convince students that Proust's book is not just about 'sensation and memory [. . .] liquescent crumbs of cake and wistful reminiscence [and] page after metaphor-laden page of lengthy sentences and prim aestheticism' (p. 22). The book starts with a clear, well-written Introduction outlining a number of Proust's key conceptions — about memory, habit, love, knowledge — and linking them with the writer's style, all the while locating his novel as one of the greatest achievements of twentieth-century modernity. Chapter 1 follows Proust's life, and in Chapter 2, 'Contexts', Watt concentrates on 'Politics and society', 'Science, technology and medicine', and 'Literature, philosophy and the arts', showing how aware of and engaged in his time Proust actually was. He also correctly places Proust in the wider context of European modernism, alongside Mann, Kafka, Woolf, and Joyce. Chapter 3 focuses on Proust's early works and late essays. Here is a useful reminder that in his early years the aspiring writer adopted a decadent style, à la Huysmans. At the same time, Watt shows Proust's astute critical mind at work, when, in Contre Sainte-Beuve, and in particular in 'Contre l'obscurité', he decisively turns his back on fin de siècle aesthetics. This change of direction might have had something to do with the 'idolatry' Proust identified in Ruskin's writings, which probably caused him to distance himself from the English critic he had spent six years translating (an unlikely task for him, as he always claimed he could not speak the language). These years were a turning point in his creative process, and it is right that Watt finds the space to mention Ruskin, in a chapter essentially dedicated to Proust's formative years, when he is clearly finding his own voice. Chapter 4, the most substantial, pays close attention to each of the seven volumes of À la recherche du temps perdu, and here, as is to be expected, a number of key moments feature: the madeleine, of course, but also the cruel scene — which reminds us that Proust knew Balzac very well — when Swann, who has just confided that he is dying to the Duc and Duchess of Guermantes as they are on their way to a party, is swiftly dismissed by the Duc, who for his part is 'dying of hunger' (p. 69). In all, Watt's book should prove useful to undergraduates, but it is also sufficiently comprehensive to enthuse the newcomer.