Proustian Uncertainties: On Reading and Rereading In Search of Lost Time

This engaging reexamination of In Search of Lost Time (1913) considers how the narrator defines himself, how this compares to what we know of Proust himself, and what the significance is of these various points of commonality and divergence. We know, for example, that the author did not hide his homosexuality, but the narrator did. Why the difference? We know that the narrator tried to marginalise his part-Jewish background. Does this reflect the author’s position, and how does the narrator handle what he tries, but does not manage, to dismiss? These are major questions raised by the text and reflected in the text, to which the author’s life doesn t give obvious answers. The narrator’s reflections on time, on death, on memory, and on love are as many paths leading to the image of self that he projects. In PROUSTIAN UNCERTAINTIES, Saul Friedlander draws on his personal experience from a life spent investigating the ties between history and memory to offer a fresh perspective on the se