Myths and Facts

Proust-averse critics  (as of now ornamented with a neologism ‘Proustaverses’) often spread negative myths about Marcel Proust and his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time (ISOLT). Let’s examine some of the most common myths and contrast them with the facts presented by their counterparts, the Proustophiles, as can be distilled from the extensive secondary literature. 

One could argue that there are three factions in the Proustian debate.   

Faction 1 is the easiest, namely the faction of the indifferent ones for whom Proust and his work mean nothing and who are often not even aware of their existence, the ‘Proustindifferents’.  

Faction 2 are the Proustophiles who find enduring pleasure in reading Marcel Proust’s work, especially his masterpiece, ISOLT. For a small portion of the Proustophiles, the pendulum swings slightly too far, and Marcel Proust and ISOLT become the center of their universe, complete with the beatification that comes with it. This segment of faction 2 also includes the rather rare Proust(oxico)maniacs, who treat most other authors the way the participants in the next camp treat Proust.  

Faction 3 are the Proustaverses, those who subtly weave negative messages into their literary criticism, often indirectly or seemingly casually, diminishing both the man and his work. 

Where does this strange, almost unstoppable tendency to belittle and denigrate, even to disqualify, the writer Marcel Proust and his work come from?  

Christophe Prendergast writes about this: “There have been many silly comments on Proust.” 

We offer an anthology of the most striking follies, and present them in ascending order of coarseness. 

Anatole France: ‘Life is too short; Proust is too long’. 

Dame Susan Hill: ‘…I have tried eversomany times to get beyond Book One.  … I find the endless sentences distancing, the people without interest. I cannot care about upper-class French people of the 19th century. … I tried to find one word to sum up how it seems to me. The word is “anaemic.”’. 

Kazuo Ishiguro (Nobel price literature 2017): ‘To be absolutely honest, apart from the opening volume of Proust, I find him crushingly dull. The  

trouble with Proust is that sometimes you go through an absolutely wonderful passage, but then you have to go about 200 pages of intense French snobbery, high-society maneuverings and pure self-indulgence. It goes on and on and on and on’.  

Evelyn Waugh: ‘I am reading Proust for the first time—in English of course—and am surprised to find him a mental defective. No one warned me of that. He has absolutely no sense of time. He can’t remember anyone’s age. In the same summer as Gilberte gives him a marble & Francoise takes him to the public lavatory in the Champs-Elysees, Bloch takes him to a brothel’. 

Germaine Greer: ‘If you haven’t read Proust, don’t worry. This lacuna in your cultural development you do not need to fill. On the other hand, if you have read all of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, you should be very worried about yourself. As Proust very well knew, reading his work for as long as it takes is temps perdu, time wasted, time that would be better spent visiting a demented relative, meditating, walking the dog or learning ancient Greek’.  

The grand prize goes to the acerbic yet hilarious comment by James Joyce: ‘A la recherche d’ Ombrelles Perdues par Plusieurs Jeunes Filles en Fleurs du Côté chez Swann et Gomorrhé et Co par Marcelle Proyce et James Joust1.    

Myths by Proustaverses versus Facts by Proustophiles 

Over the decades, a series of misconceptions and prejudices of – mainly – non-readers or readers who have not managed to read the entire work, have been repeated so often that they have become myths. In doing so, Marcel Proust as a person is often targeted as much as the work itself, ISOLT. 

By using provocative titles, we’ll introduce the clashing views on Proust: first, the most common myths perpetuated by the Proustaverses, then the responses from the Proustophiles.