6- Proustaverses 

Marcel is an elitist snob who is only interested in being part of the ‘haute bourgeoisie’ and, if possible, the aristocracy. As a mondaine dandy and right-wing socialite, he looks down on the working class. 

6- Proustophiles 

Proust has a great interest in and attention to the working class. This is evidenced by the courtesy with which he treats hotel staff and other servants, the hours he spends gathering all sorts of details from the daily lives of working people, his loving descriptions of the ‘cris de Paris’ of the street vendors that he captures before they disappear from the streetscape, the great respect he has in life and work for the many ‘Françoises’, his intimacy with Céleste Albaret, his housekeeper, who, as his confidante, helped make the ISOLT possible, etc. 

The working class are Proust’s informants. As the son of a privileged family from the upper bourgeoisie, it was Proust’s wish and dream to gain access to the absolute top of the Parisian mondaine world, on the one hand to fill his articles and books with it, and on the other to satisfy his curiosity and learning. He infiltrates this world like a spy. His interest in these diverse worlds is less driven by mondaine snobbery than by his almost anthropological mission to gather material. He buzzes around like a bumblebee to glean impressions, events, characters, and scenes everywhere that, after much reworking, obfuscation, adaptation and sharpening, find their place in the ISOLT.