Volume 46, Number 5 · March 18, 1999
The Threat to Proust
By Roger Shattuck
A la recherche du temps perdu, 1987-1989: Vol. 1
by Marcel Proust, edited by Jean-Yves Tadié
Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade/Gallimard, 1,547 pp., FF360
A la recherche du temps perdu, 1987-1989: Vol. 2
by Marcel Proust, edited by Jean-Yves Tadié
Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade/Gallimard, 1,991 pp., FF380
A la recherche du temps perdu, 1987-1989: Vol. 3
by Marcel Proust, edited by Jean-Yves Tadié
Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade/Gallimard, 1,934 pp., FF395
A la recherche du temps perdu, 1987-1989: Vol. 4
by Marcel Proust, edited by Jean-Yves Tadié
Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade/Gallimard, 1,707 pp., FF390
Marcel Proust
by Edmund White
Lipper/Viking, 165 pp., $19.95
As in all branches of science, from subatomic physics to astronomy, order of magnitude can have great importance in literature. A consideration of size and scale in literature, moreover, soon provokes opposing claims. One might claim that all literature tends to the miniaturized condition of haiku and the maxim. And one might claim that all literature tends to the condition of the roman fleuve, the overflowing epic of everything. Even Aristotle was concerned about size and warned us in the Poetics that the dimensions of a work should not exceed our capacity to grasp its beginning, middle, and end. Many writers have produced unified works that may strike us as inordinately long: Lady Murasaki, the authors of the Roman de la rose, Tolstoy, Musil. But it is primarily in respect to Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time that we work out our problems and our impulses concerning order of magnitude.
Review, 3975 words
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