Product Description

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 unclichéd 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19704 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-28
• Released on: 1998-04-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Amazon.com Review
This is a genius-level piece of writing that manages to blend literary biography with self-help and tongue-in-cheek with the profound. The quirky, early 1900s French author Marcel Proust acts as the vessel for surprisingly impressive nuggets of wisdom on down-to-earth topics such as why you should never sleep with someone on the first date, how to protect yourself against lower back pain, and how to cope with obnoxious neighbors. Here's proof that our ancestors had just as much insight as the gurus du jour and perhaps a lot more wit. De Botton simultaneously pokes fun at the self-help movement and makes a significant contribution to its archives.

From Publishers Weekly
Generally writers fall into one of two camps: those who feel that one can't write without having a firm grasp on Proust, and those who, like Virginia Woolf, are crippled by his influence. De Botton, the author of On Love, The Romantic Movement and Kiss and Tell, obviously falls into the former category. But rather than an endless exegesis on memory, de Botton has chosen to weave Proust's life, work, friends and era into a gently irreverent, tongue-in-cheek self-help book. For example, in the chapter titled "How to Suffer Successfully," de Botton lists poor Proust's many difficulties (asthma, "awkward desires," sensitive skin, a Jewish mother, fear of mice), which is essentially a funny way of telling the reader quite a lot about the man's life. Next he moves on to Proust's little thesis that because we only really think when distressed, we shouldn't worry about striving for happiness so much as "pursuing ways to be properly and productively unhappy." De Botton then cheerily judges various characters of A la recherche against their author's maxims. At the beginning, when de Botton drags his own girlfriend into a tortuous and not terribly successful digression, readers may be skeptical, but they will be won over by his whimsical relation of Proust's lessons?essentially an exhortation to slow down, pay attention and learn from life. Is it profound? No. Does this add something new to Proust scholarship? Probably not. But it's a real pleasure to read someone who treats this sacrosanct subject as something that is still vital and vigorous. 25,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Here's an antidote for readers paralyzed by the anxiety of influence. Novelist and literary biographer de Botton (Kiss & Tell, Picador, 1996) sets out to exorcise the influence of Marcel Proust, using the words of the great French author of In Search of Lost Time most engagingly for and against him. In the process, de Botton fashions a hilarious work of authorial self-help. Like Julian Barnes in his Flaubert's Parrot, de Botton knows his author intimately, from what newspaper snippets he would have read each morning to what he and James Joyce said to each other the one time they met ("Non."). In pithy sections, spliced with kitschy photos and plenty of white space, he takes on Proust's personal and writerly idiosyncrasies: the length of his sentences; his loving devotion to minutiae; his elevation of the quotidian; his hypochondria. De Botton might not make us better people (he quotes the perennially miserable Proust on love in a Q-and-A format: "how to be happy in love"), but he will make us more careful readers. For all literature collections.?Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Read the Overture to Swann's Way Instead (You'll Learn Far More)
This book starts out strong- antiquated images from Marcel's father Dr. Proust's guide to physical fitness, and long Proustian sentences spiraling and swirling in tiny text charm and capture the reader's attention. But somewhere in the middle, the book just lost me. It is too fluffy to maintain the interest of someone who already loves "In Search of Lost Time," and if you have not read the novels, De Botton's analysis is superficial and will not give you a true sense of their pleasure and power. There are far more illuminating critical texts on the subject, as well as more thorough biographies. Seriously, is the fact that Marcel enjoyed wearing tight underpants life-changing information? This book is an entertaining way to pass an afternoon- but at the end of the day you will be chafing for it to end.

Title a bit too optimistic?
I bought this book as an introduction to Proust. The author synthesizes Proust's philosophical perspective quite effectively while providing interesting background on the incongruities with the French author's actual life. I still intend to tackle Proust's novel this fall, but as a Virginia Woolf devotee, I was surprised to learn how much she was influenced by Proust. Wouldn't it be fascinating if they could have had a conversation? I understand Woolf was not overly impressed with Joyce who actually did meet Proust. I think Woolf's insights would have been astounding. I do recommend the De Botton book.

Interesting reading
I loved this book. It introduced me to Proust's life and works and so far, I have finished Volume I of In Search of Lost Time and have started on Volume II. The well crafted sentences and witty writing are a pleasureable introduction to Proust.