Marcel Proust, a French author of the late-19th and early-20th century, has been an undeniable and timeless influence not only on writers and the very structure of literature but in the clarification of the universal experience we all share.
In Search of Lost Time
Proust’s arguably most famous work, In Search of Lost Time, is a herculean feat of seven volumes published over a period of over ten years. Proust did not finish the work before he died, and the last two volumes were published posthumously and edited by his brother. The collected work boasts over 3,000 pages and has been translated into 40 languages.
The work of Marcel Proust has never been out of print. This fact is illustrative of the enormous legacy this turn-of-the-century French novelist has had on literature. The appetite for his perspective has never diminished, and writers who have received his torch of influence have gone on to pass it to many of the most famous writers of modern times.
Literary Structure
Until the publication of his seven-volume masterpiece, literature owed itself to a particular narrative tone that reserved a limited space for the mental wanderings and emotional state of its protagonists. With its pages upon pages of musings, recollections, and contemplation, one might say that Proust paved the way for the stream of consciousness literary form which crystallized in the 1960s with writers like Jack Kerouac and continues to this day. Central to this narrative style is the shattering of expectation and resolution which readers at that time (and readers today, to a certain extent as well) were exclusively familiar with. The interviewer who stood at Proust’s bedside for hours as part of the publicity surrounding Proust’s first novel observed that the novels lacked what “we rely on in most novels to carry us along in some state of expectation through a series of adventures to the necessary resolution.β
Legacy
Other form-bending writers like Vladimir Nabokov, famous in society for his novel Lolita but also the author of truly trailblazing works like Pale Fire, heralded Proust as an enormous influence on his literary canon. Shelby Foote, famous also for a set of incredibly dense series of books (his a non-fiction but highly literary history of the civil war), has confidently classed Proust with no equal beyond Shakespeare–and he is not the only one to hold the author in this regard. Andre Aciman, the author of the 2007 book Call Me By Your Name now enjoying a resurgence in popularity and himself a scholar of Proust, has the same praise to dole out. The term “Proustian”, long interchangeable with nostalgia, memory, or certain previously indescribable ways that emotion intermingles with time, also serves as an example of the influence Proust has had not only on literature but in our ability to name universal experiences. Considering the considerable legacy Shakespeare has enjoyed on naming things, the comparison seems appropriate.
Time Itself
Central to his legacy is also the sheer focus and dedication required to finish even one of his novels. Consummate with this experience is the lesson that masterpieces are not consumable, bite-size pieces of media are easily digested and presented in the most palatable form possible. A literary masterpiece is not a snack, nor is it even a meal–it is prolonged sustenance over a long period of time. It is its own era. Writers read Proust to gain confidence in the attention their own novels place on the universal, often unspoken impressions central to the human experience but marginal to most social interactions or replications of life. Ironically, and certainly intentionally, one cannot read “In Search of Lost Time” without giving up a considerable amount of one’s own time.
Bruce is the chief editor in a publishing company. He also teaches classes and speaks on seminars to encourage more of the young aspiring authors.