About twenty years ago, I read the first volume of In Search of Lost Time just to get a taste of it, not intending to read the whole cycle, as I was too fidgety to imagine spending half or more of a reading year on just one work. Bearing in mind a co-worker’s account of how he had been reading it for six months (in the original), I was at awe at his perseverance as well as sceptical about my own. My initial plan, as so often turned out nugatory. I was too hooked to leave it by one volume, and read them all. I was so intrigued I even read a biography of Proust (Ghislain de Diesbach, Proust) and a few related books about the experience of reading Proust (How Proust Can Change Your Life, Een liefde voor Proust: Op zoek naar de verloren tijd in 22 leeservaringen) - and made a small detour to Cabourg to throw a quick glance on the Grand Hotel too.

Since turning the last page no year has passed without the intention of getting back to the cycle again; only having managed to re-read one volume, since (‘Un amour de Swann’) and a few volumes of the gorgeous graphic novel adaptation from Stéphane Heuet), coming across reviews and discussions on the cycle regularly, the desire to re-read has only grown stronger. As it is the centenary year of Proust’s death, if in need for any further encouragement, the discovery of Christopher Prendergast’s book Living and Dying with Marcel Proust couldn’t have come more timely. It was the first time I read a book related to Proust that focussed more on the novel itself than on the life of its author, combining the pleasures of learning a bunch of new things with rediscovery.

Prendergast constructs his book around thematic and key entries to meander through the body of Proust’s cycle (Proust’s insomnia and asthma of which there are many echoes in the cycle; bread, Proust’s synesthetic perception and imagination, his intense connection with colour and the use of colour in the novel (focussing on the hues of pink), memory, breath, music, cheeks, breasts and milk, death). Via details as the hawthorns and the inevitable madeleine biscuit and closely in tune to Proust’s style he clarifies Proust’s narrative techniques like his way of progressing digressively – the Proustian Detour with a capital D – the essence of the novel as a Künstlerroman and the structure of the storytelling through metaphorical concepts as crossroads and stitching of threads which are at the heart of the novel, offering keys to understand the stylistic fabric of it. Prendergast amply draws from the novel and has a keen eye for alluring minutiae, for instance indicating the watch as a minor leitmotif, or ‘the key Proustian sound which is ‘the murmur’. Because of the well-chosen quotations to illustrate his observations it is easy to fall in love with and bask in Proust’s sentences again; just take this sentence which Prendergast quotes to illustrate Proust’s synaesthesia, of which he discerned literally thousands of examples in the novel:

"When, before leaving the church, I kneeled in front of the altar, I suddenly smelled, as I stood up, a bitter-sweet scent of almonds, escaping from the hawthorns, and then I noticed, on the flowers, little yellower places under which I imagined that scent must be hidden, as the taste of a frangipani must be hidden under the burned parts, or that of Mlle Vinteuil’s cheeks under their freckles; Despite the silence and stillness of the hawthorns, this intermittent scent was like the murmur of an intense life with which the altar quivered like a country hedge visited by living antennae, of which I was reminded by the sight of certain stamens, almost russet-red, that seemed to have preserved the springtime virulence, the irritant power, of insects now metamorphosed into flowers."

An anecdote which particularly amused me was that Proust, when asked in a survey for a newspaper on what sort of work he would have chosen if he wouldn’t be a writer, answered he would have liked to be a baker. It made me smile because I just read that the Flemish author Stijn Streuvels, born in the same year as Proust (1871) and known for his lyrical naturalism, actually trained and worked as a baker before becoming a writer. The baker that was lost in Proust brings Prendergast to highlight the import of bakery items (especially croissants) in the cycle and to some possibly shocking revelations (the madeleine in the novel drafts appeared first as a slice of toast! Instead of loving lime blossom tea, Proust was partial to café au lait!).

"But when nothing subsists of a distant past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things alone, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, on the ruin of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory."

Prendergast points out that the world from the Recherche is death-haunted from start to finish. What will stay with me is the way he elucidates how subtle Proust weaves grieving into his cycle. While it was Roland Barthes’s Mourning Diary which reminded me of the moving passages in which Marcel addresses the loss of his grandmother, it was Prendergast who made me aware I had entirely forgotten – or perhaps skimmed over at the time of reading – the disappearance of Marcel’s mother from the novel – her death – by recapitulating scenes in Venice which had entirely slipped my mind. Likely, reading the same book at different stages of life makes one read it differently; one’s perspective on it changes and the same details might resonate quite differently (Prendergast’s recurrent highlighting of the ‘Bal des têtes’ sequence in the novel rekindled the memory that at the time of reading it, this phenomenal sequence helped me to see why my mother-in-law seemed to enjoy attending funerals so much).

Eloquent, evocative and entertaining, a delightful blend of enthralling anecdotes, facts and literary insights and reflections, Living and Dying with Marcel Proust aims for amateur Proustians rather than specialists. It is not a book to be read as an introduction to the Recherche as it reveals far too many essential plot elements and information on the fate of some of the characters that could spoil the reading pleasure of discovering them oneself. Probably readers who have not read the entire cycle yet better withhold from reading the book until the finale, as Prendergast’s reflections on the ingenious structure of the storytelling, the leitmotifs, the temporal shuffles which are a mix of recapitulations, disruptions and interpolations might resonate more when one has experienced the whole narrative arc.

Together with the lavishly illustrated 'Le Paris retrouvé de Marcel Proust' which I finished a few weeks ago, Living and Dying with Marcel Proust seems an excellent and enriching companion piece to (re)-read when proceeding through the cycle again. even if Prendergast’s peculiar sense of humour and the rather pointless epilogue not entirely resonated with me. I hope that somewhere in the future there will be room to succumb to the voluminous Proust biography by Jean-Yves Tadié too.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher Europa Compass for an ARC.

This is not a commentary on Proust or an academic monograph: the individual chapters range over key elements such as the senses, the colour pink, breasts, but they don't form an argument or thesis or come to a conclusion. Which is, of course, superbly fitting for a book which is deeply in dialogue with A la recherche, a novel without plot which circles back on itself endlessly.

I'd say this is a book for those who have read Proust all the way through at least once: it's too full of spoilers for anyone who hasn't yet but intends to read A la recherche. At times it can be frustratingly obtuse; at others gently humourous; again, enlightening (and I especially liked the chapter on colour, specifically the uses of pink throughout the seven volumes). Most of all, though, this is a book which invites, even urges, us to reread Proust and to take that journey all over again with Marcel.