"A self-help manual for the intelligent person...witty, funny and tonic". -- The New York Times Book Review
For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In, Search of Lost Time (while bedridden, no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, the acclaimed young author of On Love and The Romantic Movement dips deeply into Proust's life and work and distills from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.
In de Botton's reading, the infamously unhappy author turns out to be a font of good advice on such subjects as cultivating friendships, suffering successfully, recognizing love, and understanding why we should never sleep with someone on a first date. And here, too, is a generously perceptive guide to the Proustian oeuvre that suggests that the master is as relevant today as he was in fin de siecle Paris.
"Literary criticism wearing its slyest disguise since Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot". -- Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Dazzling....It contains more human interest and play of fancy than most fiction". -- The New Yorker
Publisher Marketing: As relevant today as they were at the turn of the century, Proust's life and work are transformed here into a no-nonsense guide to, among other things, enjoying your vacation, reviving a relationship, achieving original and uncliched articulation, being a good host, recognizing love, and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on a first date. It took de Botton to find the inspiration in Proust's essays, letters, and fiction and, perhaps even more surprising, to draw out a vivid and clarifying portrait of the master from between the lines of his work.
Jacket Description/Flap: Alain de Botton combines two unlikely genres--literary biography and self-help manual--in the hilarious and unexpectedly practical How Proust Can Change Your Life. Who would have thought that Marcel Proust, one of the most important writers of our century, could provide us with such a rich source of insight into how best to live life? Proust understood that the essence and value of life was the sum of its everyday parts. As relevant today as they were at the turn of the century, Proust's life and work are transformed here into a no-nonsense guide to, among other things, enjoying your vacation, reviving a relationship, achieving original and uncliched articulation, being a good host, recognizing love, and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on a first date. It took de Botton to find the inspirational in Proust's essays, letters and fiction and, perhaps even more surprising, to draw out a vivid and clarifying portrait of the master from between the lines of his work. Here is Proust as we have never seen or read him before: witty, intelligent, pragmatic. He might well change your life.
