The Proust Project

"Discovering Proust is like wandering through a totally unfamiliar land and finding it peopled with kindred spirits and sister souls and fellow countrymen . . . They speak our language, our dialect, share our blind-spots and are awkward in exactly the same way we are, just as their manner of lacing every access of sorrow with slapstick reminds us so much of how we do it when we are sad and wish to hide it, that surely we are not alone and not as strange as we feared we were. And here lies the paradox. So long as a writer tells us what he and only he can see, then surely he speaks our language." --from the preface by Andre Aciman For "The Proust Project," editor Andre Aciman asked twenty-eight writers--Shirley Hazzard, Lydia Davis, Richard Howard, Alain de Botton, Diane Johnson, Edmund White, and others--to choose a favorite passage from "In Search of Lost Time" and introduce it in a brief essay. Gathered together, along with the passages themselves (and a synopsis that guides the reader from one passage to the next), these essays form the perfect introduction to the greatest novel of the last century, and the perfect gift for any Proustian. FSG will co-publish "The Proust Project" in a deluxe edition with Turtle Point Press, Books & Co., and Helen Marx Books. Andre Aciman is the author of "Out of Egypt" and" False Papers." He is also a frequent contributor to "The New Yorker" and "The New York Review of Books." Aciman teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.For "The Proust Project," editor Andre Aciman asked twenty-eight writers--among them Shirley Hazzard, Lydia Davis, Richard Howard, Alain de Botton, Diane Johnson, Edmund White, Geoffrey O'Brien, Wayne Koestenbaum, Susan Minot, Andrew Solomon, and Louis Auchincloss--to choose a favorite passage from "In Search of Lost Time" and introduce it in a brief essay. As gathered togethered here, along with the translated passages themselves (and a synopsis that guides the reader from one passage to the next), these essays form the perfect introduction to the greatest novel of the last century. "Discovering Proust is like wandering through a totally unfamiliar land and finding it peopled with kindred spirits and sister souls and fellow countrymen . . . They speak our language, our dialect, share our blind-spots, and are awkward in exactly the same way we are, just as their manner of lacing every access of sorrow with slapstick reminds us so much of how we do it when we are sad and wish to hide it, that surely we are not alone and not as strange as we feared we were. And here lies the paradox. So long as a writer tells us what he and only he can see, then surely he speaks our language."--Andre Aciman, from his Preface "Editor Andre Aciman's introductory essays gracefully place the individual passages in the larger context of the multivolume novel with great skill. He also provides the most penetrating essay on "In Search of Lost Time" in his preface."--Barbara Fisher, "The Boston Globe"

Review :
Discovering Proust is like wandering through a totally unfamiliar land and finding it peopled with kindred spirits and sister souls and fellow countrymen... They speak our language, our dialect, share our blind spots, and are awkward in exactly the same way we are, just as their manner of lacing every access of sorrow with slapstick reminds us so much of how we do it when we are sad and wish to hide it, that surely we are not alone and not as strange as we feared we were.