Yes my friends, this is perhaps the most overrated writer that nobody has read.

And why would anyone read him ? His masterpiece, In search of time lost is marathonic and sometimes dull, a book about snobbism and elusive inner feelings, going on for more than two thousand pages.

Yet going in search of time lost is not a waste of time, in a most 2020 fashion, let us give you five good reasons why.

Proust’s writing, stereotyped as pages-long sentences and an overly-refined vocabulary, is a beautiful one. In a definitely modern fashion, the style could be compared to impressionist paintings, and to Debussy’s music. Surprisingly, there is something abstract and unfinished in this work, the novel is huge but still, one can guess that there is even more in this life story that we will never get to know.

All book long breathes in a lingering feeling of sweet melancholy, Proust’s main character and narrator is a neurotic, which could explain it, but still the novel could not be described as a sad one. Nostalgic, slow-paced, inwards-gazing, this is the kind of beauty that Proust painted in his masterpiece.

True friends.

With so many pages, so many sub-stories, so many characters, In search of time lost feels like its own social network, full of touching drama and lively personalities . After spending all these hours reading chapter after chapter of an unfolding life, Proust’s character start to be a part of one’s life. Mr De Charlus, Swann, Ms De Guermantes, Albertine… sometimes we feel we now them better than people we work with, isn’t it frightening ?

At first I started to read this masterpiece because I was in search of a never ending story. The sad part is that I am now reaching its end. The bright part is that I can remember Charles Swann as a true friend and a man of distinction, yet he is a character from a book. Do we realize that Proust found a way to create the most perfect of all masterpieces : a human life ?

An artist’s work.

One of the most recurring theme of the book is possibly art. Be it literature, painting, sculpture, music, or even tailoring, all of the work is and ode to artistic creation and inspiration. While I disagree with the statement, someone summed up this story as “Marcel wants to become a writer”. I think this is false, but I must admit that all book long the quest for inspiration, and its search in all aspects of life is omnipresent.

Marcel, the main protagonist, to busy hating himself for his own indolence, does not seem to realize that he is always surrounding himself with artists, creators and spiritually inspired people. Even what he sees as his incurable laziness, staying shut in his room, is the most effective way for his inspiration to bloom, seclusion being the sustenance of his genius.

Yes artists of the patient type could definitely benefit from reading this book.

Assassination of French literature.

There is a more sadistic and refined pleasure in reading Proust. It is to see French literature being exposed naked and slowly killed. All the way from François Rabelais to the then recent Zola, Proust is putting a great stop sign to the development of what we now know as French literature. What do I mean by this ?

What I mean is that Proust was not a literary type, nor a political activist, he was a rich bourgeois man writing as an amateur from his bed, living off an enormous inheritance. He has nothing of generations of scholars, religious figures, philosophers and politically engaged writers of French literary history.

The subject of his book is frivolous and superficial, he writes the fictitious autobiography of a selfish young man. And yet he manages to put out the best style a man has seen in a century, writing with more deepness than the generations of more or less engaged writers to come. (Sartre, Malraux, sorry but you’re no match for Proust’s ramblings).

Therefore I say it : Marcel Proust killed French literature. What came after him is either pale imitation of the past, or a totally new phenomenon.

Seeking wisdom.

Last but not least, we should remember that masters of yore often took the disguise of drunkards and beggars. Why then could they not take the disguise of a rich and foolish social climber ?

In search of time lost, a book about posh princesses and would-be aristocrats, has a hidden core that one must find through undisturbed reading… I cannot really write about it as it is beyond words. Suffice to say that rather than a true story, the novel is more of a fragment of a human soul. If one really thinks about it, what would happen if one carefully observed the mystery of the soul for days and months ?

Infinite wisdom.