Marcel Proust

C. K. Scott Moncrieff

Vincent Kelvin

In Search of Lost Time (French: À la recherche du temps perdu)—also translated as Remembrance of Things Past—is a novel by Marcel Proust (1871–1922). His most prominent work, it is known both for its length and its theme of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." The novel began to take shape in 1909. Proust continued to work on it until his final illness in the autumn of 1922 forced him to break off. Proust established the structure early on, but even after volumes were initially finished he kept adding new material and edited one volume after another for publication. The last three of the seven volumes contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages as they existed in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.The work was published in France between 1913 and 1927. Proust paid for the publication of the first volume (by the Grasset publishing house) after it had been turned down by leading editors who had been offered the manuscript in longhand. Many of its ideas, motifs, and scenes are foreshadowed in Proust's unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil (1896–99), though the perspective and treatment there are different, and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908–09). The novel had great influence on twentieth-century literature; some writers have sought to emulate it, others to parody it. In the centenary year of Du côté de chez Swann, Edmund White pronounced A la recherche du temps perdu "the most respected novel of the twentieth century."

In Search of Lost Time

Marcel Proust - Swann's Way

Luigi Pirandello

Originally published in Italian in 1915, Shoot! is one of the first novels to take as its subject the heady world of early motion pictures. Based on the absurdist journals of fictional Italian camera operator Serafino Gubbio, Shoot! documents the infancy of film in Europe—complete with proto-divas, laughable production schedules, and cost-cutting measures with priceless effects-—and offers a glimpse of the modern world through the camera's lens. Shoot!, presented here in its 1927 English translation, is a classic example of Nobel Prize-winning Sicilian playwright Luigi Pirandello's (1867-1936) literary talent and genius for blurring the line between art and reality. From the film studio Kosmograph, Pirandello's Gubbio steadily winds the crank of his camera by day and scribbles with his pen by night, revealing the world both mundane and melodramatic that unfolds in front of his camera. Through Gubbio's narrative—saturated with fantasy and folly—Pirandello grapples with the philosophical implications of modernity. Like much of Pirandello's work, Shoot! parodies human weaknesses, drawing attention to the themes of isolation and madness as emerging tendencies in the modern world. Enhanced by new critical commentaries, Shoot! is an entertaining caricature, capturing early twentieth-century Italian filmmaking and revealing its truths as only a parody can.

The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Operator

Shoot!

Marcel Proust's classic novel Swann's Way is replete with recollections of the distant past. This is the first volume of the acclaimed series: Remembrance of Things Past, also named In Search of Lost Time. Originally written and published in 1909, this premier entry in Proust's series contains some of the finest prose fiction Proust ever authored. Although lengthy, no sacrifice is made with the signature style Proust had cultivated by the time he commenced Swann's Way - recollections are written relentlessly, of places, names, items and other such paraphernalia of life. The narrator gradually builds up a plot surrounding his own life and activities. The titular character, Charles Swann is an associate of the narrator's family who receives particular interest in the story. The first scene recounts a dinner in which Swann was in attendance, noting his characteristics. By stages, a compelling story unfolds with Swann's affections for the former courtesan Odette de Crecy explored.

C. K. Scott Moncrieff

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