Harold March

Although this started strong, it got pretty dry, and that's why it took me nearly a month to get through its 250-ish pages. The "two worlds" of the title are the intellectual and the emotional - the author says that we have three aspects to personality (the active is the third, but Proust wasn't very drawn in this direction), and these two were the ones dominating Proust. The book covers Proust's life, his works before In Search of Lost Time, and of course that work. It was interesting to read about how he was perceived in society (much like the narrator Marcel - solicitous to the point of arousing suspicions about his sincerity, anxious to be liked) and what people thought about his talent (it varied wildly).

I most enjoyed the excerpts from his letters, where he described the structure and plans he had for In Search of Lost Time, along with his doubts about whether or not he would be able to achieve it. One downside: this book was published in 1946 and as a result, the views on homosexuality are not the most evolved when expressed, and the issue seems to be skirted as much as possible. That plus the dryness of much of the writing really made it drag, but maybe it would have been more enjoyable and interesting to me if it weren't the first thing I read about Proust. Worth the ten cents I paid for it.

A couple of interesting quotes: "What is more individual to Proust, and what is perhaps the chief reason why he is at first hard to read, is that he sees events, not as external, objective and successive, but as internal images and echoes which come and go and come back again."

"Prerequisite to the enjoyment of Proust is a preference for the overtones of experience to experience itself. Proust writes for introverts." (Although I'd quibble with that last part. This extrovert enjoyed reading Proust quite a bit.)… (altro)