Proust For Beginners

by Steve Bachmann, Van Howell (Illustrator), Harold Augenbraum (Foreword by)

Overview

Proust For Beginners is a compelling biography of French novelist Marcel Proust and a vivid portrait of his times. It also serves as a concise guide and critical review of In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu, 7 volumes, 1913-1927), one of the most difficult—yet widely taught—works of French literature.

With extensive passages from In Search of Lost Time and other essential works, Proust For Beginners highlights the defining themes and unique literary style of a modern master whom many have heard about but few fully fathom. It portrays Proust and the milieu in which he wrote in vivid detail, bringing to life the "Proustian moments" at the heart of his greatest work—and our own everyday experience.

Proust's masterpiece "begins in a series of rooms in which he unlocks themes, styles, references, and foreshadows," writes Harold Augenbraum in the foreword. Proust For Beginners will provide the key.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781939994448
Publisher:	For Beginners
Publication date:	05/17/2016
Series:	For Beginners
Pages:	170
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Steve Bachmann, AB (Harvard), MFA (UNO), JD (Harvard), now retired, worked for social change over the years as an attorney for many organizations including Project Vote, ACORN, Acorn Housing Corporation, Agape Broadcasting Foundation, and SEIU Health Care Illinois and Indiana. He is also co-founder of The New Orleans Art Review. Bachmann has written scores of law review articles and several books over the years, including Preach Liberty (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990); Nonprofit Litigation (John Wiley and Sons, 1992); Lawyers, Law and Social Change (2001) published in conjunction with the ACORN Cultural Trust and Unlimited Publishing LLC.

Van Howell is a political cartoonist, caricaturist, and book illustrator (Derrida For Beginners).

Table of Contents

Foreword Harold Augenbraum xii

Introduction 1

Part 1 Proust and History

Communes

Jews

The State

Proust's Parents

Politics and the Birth of Proust

Destabilization and the Modern

Young Proust

Teenage Proust and the Late 1880s

Early 1890s

Mid-1890s: First Book

Mid-1890s: Anti-Semitism and the Dreyfus Affair

Jean Santeuil

Late 1890s: John Ruskin

Early 1900s

Thoreau

Sainte-Beuve

Late 1900s

Thomas Hardy

The Cork-Lined Room

Against Sainte-Beuve

Working Toward Swann

War Interruptus

Finis

Part 2 Recherche 73

What, Who, Where, When, How

Swann's Way

Within a Budding Grove

The Guermantetf Way

Sodom and Gomorrah

The Captive and the Fugitive

Time Regained

Part 3 Evaluations 112

Flux as Content

Flux as Form

Those Long Sentences

Those Structured Sentences

Proust and Plato

Ultimate Worth

Labeling the Madeleine Moment

The Madeleine Paragraph

Precondition: Depression

Why a Madeleine?

Ecstasy

Meaning (Immortality)

Involuntary

Rare

Ascertainment

The Title and its Translation-A Point for the Cocktail Party

Resurrection - Summary and Samples

Can Proust Change Your Life?

Conclusion: Against Sainte-Beuve, Preface 155

Post-Conclusion: Proust for Fun and Family 162

Credit Where Credit is Due 162

Further Reading 165