Overview

Reading was so important to Marcel Proust that it sometimes seems he was unable to create a personage without a book in hand. Everybody in his work reads: servants and masters, children and parents, artists and physicians. The more sophisticated characters find it natural to speak in quotations. Proust made literary taste a means of defining personalities and gave literature an actual role to play in his novels. In this wonderfully entertaining book, Anka Muhlstein draws out these themes in Proust's work and life while highlighting the finest French literature.

Full Product Details

9781590515662

Table of Contents

Reviews

<p> With Monsieur Proust's Library, Anka Muhlstein has added another volume to the collection of splendid books about Proust. A woman of intellectual refinement, subtle understanding and deep literary culture...Ms. Muhlstein is an excellent provisioner of high-quality intellectual goods. - Wall Street Journal

<p> This gemlike exloration of the literary underpinnings of A la recherche du temps perdu reveals a Marecel Proust who did not so much read books as absorb them. - The New Yorker <br><br> With Monsieur Proust's Library, Anka Muhlstein has added another volume to the collection of splendid books about Proust. A woman of intellectual refinement, subtle understanding and deep literary culture...Ms. Muhlstein is an excellent provisioner of high-quality intellectual goods. - Wall Street Journal<br><br> . ..Anka Muhlstein's Monsieur Proust's Library , which looks at In Search of Lost Time by way of the books that Proust himself read and the way they influenced both the book and its characters, has become a permanent addition to my Proust library, and is a must read both for Proustians and want-to-be Proustians alike...It's a marvelous book. -Publishing Perspectives<br><br> Muhlstein shows admirable restraint, focusing on select topics to contextualize Proust's work in an accessible way...It's a quick read, and the tight focus and brisk, topical chapters offer an entree to a work that is not always easy to penetrate. -The Coffin Factory<br><br> This engaging little volume looks at the writers and literary works that influenced Marcel Proust, a passionate reader whose characters often appear book-in-hand. A helpful introduction to A la recherche du temps perdu , this new work reveals the ways in which Proust's favorite writers--Saint-Simon, Racine, Mme de Sevigne, Balzac, Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky--inform his magnum opus. -France Magazine<br> <br> The author of Balzac's Omelette offers another sensual appreciation of a classic author, this time submitting to the books that Proust loved...You don't absolutely need to know In Search of Lost Time to read Muhlstein's brisk little volume, a mini-biography that dissects the many literary influences of [Proust]. - The Daily Beast (Hot Reads)<br><br>

<p> This gemlike exloration of the literary underpinnings of A la recherche du temps perdu reveals a Marecel Proust who did not so much read books as absorb them. - The New Yorker <br> Anka Muhlstein, who most recently wrote about Balzac ( Balzac's Omelette ), here turns her attention to Proust's enthusiasms, antagonisms, and literary influences- a perfect subject during this centennial of Swann's Way. That herself is French and was brought up in Paris and in a not dissimilar lycee system makes her a reader who is sensitive to nuances of style and echoes of older standard French authors. -Edmund White, New York Review of Books <br> With Monsieur Proust's Library, Anka Muhlstein has added another volume to the collection of splendid books about Proust. A woman of intellectual refinement, subtle understanding and deep literary culture...Ms. Muhlstein is an excellent provisioner of high-quality intellectual goods. - Wall Street Journal <br>. . .Anka Muhlstein's Monsieur Proust's Library, which looks at In Search of Lost Time by way of the books that Proust himself read and the way they influenced both the book and its characters, has become a permanent addition to my Proust library, and is a must read both for Proustians and want-to-be Proustians alike...It's a marvelous book. -Publishing Perspectives <br> Muhlstein shows admirable restraint, focusing on select topics to contextualize Proust's work in an accessible way...It's a quick read, and the tight focus and brisk, topical chapters offer an entree to a work that is not always easy to penetrate. -The Coffin Factory <br> This engaging little volume looks at the writers and literary works that influenced Marcel Proust, a passionate reader whose characters often appear book-in-hand. A helpful introduction to A la recherche du temps perdu, this new work reveals the ways in which Proust's favorite writers--Saint-Simon, Racine, Mme de Sevigne, Balzac, Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky--in

<p> This gemlike exloration of the literary underpinnings of A la recherche du temps perdu reveals a Marecel Proust who did not so much read books as absorb them. - The New Yorker <br><br> With Monsieur Proust's Library, Anka Muhlstein has added another volume to the collection of splendid books about Proust. A woman of intellectual refinement, subtle understanding and deep literary culture...Ms. Muhlstein is an excellent provisioner of high-quality intellectual goods. - Wall Street Journal<br><br> . ..Anka Muhlstein's Monsieur Proust's Library, which looks at In Search of Lost Time by way of the books that Proust himself read and the way they influenced both the book and its characters, has become a permanent addition to my Proust library, and is a must read both for Proustians and want-to-be Proustians alike...It's a marvelous book. -Publishing Perspectives<br><br> This engaging little volume looks at the writers and literary works that influenced Marcel Proust, a passionate reader whose characters often appear book-in-hand. A helpful introduction to A la recherche du temps perdu , this new work reveals the ways in which Proust's favorite writers--Saint-Simon, Racine, Mme de Sevigne, Balzac, Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky--inform his magnum opus. -France Magazine<br> <br> The author of Balzac's Omelette offers another sensual appreciation of a classic author, this time submitting to the books that Proust loved...You don't absolutely need to know In Search of Lost Time to read Muhlstein's brisk little volume, a mini-biography that dissects the many literary influences of [Proust]. - The Daily Beast (Hot Reads)<br><br>

This gemlike exploration of the literary underpinnings of A la recherche du temps perdu reveals a Marcel Proust who did not so much read books as absorb them. - The New Yorker Anka Muhlstein, who most recently wrote about Balzac ( Balzac's Omelette ), here turns her attention to Proust's enthusiasms, antagonisms, and literary influences- a perfect subject during this centennial of Swann's Way. That herself is French and was brought up in Paris and in a not dissimilar lycee system makes her a reader who is sensitive to nuances of style and echoes of older standard French authors. -Edmund White, New York Review of Books With Monsieur Proust's Library, Anka Muhlstein has added another volume to the collection of splendid books about Proust. A woman of intellectual refinement, subtle understanding and deep literary culture...Ms. Muhlstein is an excellent provisioner of high-quality intellectual goods. - Wall Street Journal . . .Anka Muhlstein's Monsieur Proust's Library, which looks at In Search of Lost Time by way of the books that Proust himself read and the way they influenced both the book and its characters, has become a permanent addition to my Proust library, and is a must read both for Proustians and want-to-be Proustians alike...It's a marvelous book. -Publishing Perspectives Muhlstein shows admirable restraint, focusing on select topics to contextualize Proust's work in an accessible way...It's a quick read, and the tight focus and brisk, topical chapters offer an entrEe to a work that is not always easy to penetrate. -The Coffin Factory This engaging little volume looks at the writers and literary works that influenced Marcel Proust, a passionate reader whose characters often appear book-in-hand. A helpful introduction to A la recherche du temps perdu, this new work reveals the ways in which Proust's favorite writers--Saint-Simon, Racine, Mme de SEvignE, Balzac, Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky--inform his magnum opus. -France Magazine The author of Balzac's Omelette offers another sensual appreciation of a classic author, this time submitting to the books that Proust loved...You don't absolutely need to know In Search of Lost Time to read Muhlstein's brisk little volume, a mini-biography that dissects the many literary influences of [Proust]. - The Daily Beast (Hot Reads) [Muhlstein] is thoroughly versed not only in Proust's life but also in his work; her knowledge of individual characters is especially striking...This biography is an easy and interesting read, even for the novice Proust scholar, and an excellent accompaniment to an In Search of Lost Time (re)read. - San Francisco Book Review Muhlstein has ideas of her own about the way in which Proust not only dealt with the anxieties of influence but also brought to a head a long and rich tradition -- something one can scarcely imagine a writer doing today. - Gay and Lesbian Review

Author Information

Anka Muhlstein was born in Paris in 1935. Muhlstein has published biographies of Queen Victoria, James de Rothschild, Cavelier de La Salle, and Astolphe de Custine; studies on Catherine de Médicis, Marie de Médicis, and Anne of Austria; a double biography, Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart; and most recently, Balzac’s Omelette (Other Press). She has won two prizes from the Académie française and the Goncourt Prize for Biography. She and her husband, Louis Begley, have written a book on Venice, Venice for Lovers. They live in New York City.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available