Proust, a Jewish Way

Reviews / Votes

In this delicate, detailed account of certain readings of Proust, Compagnon evokes a double destiny: that of Proust as a Jewish writer and that of France as a country where Zionism and assimilation clash and where antisemitism seems to fade only to rise again with a vengeance. The story, which takes us from the 1920s to World War II, is fascinating, troubling and haunted by a discreet, difficult hope of understanding. A masterpiece of historical re-creation. -- Michael Wood, professor emeritus of English, Princeton University Compagnon, a world-renowned Proust scholar for the past four decades, reveals the history of the maternal side of the novelist's family and explains how Proust was read and appropriated by Jewish critics after his death in France and elsewhere. The book unfurls like an investigation and is a highly enjoyable read. -- Francois Proulx, author of <i>Victims of the Book: Reading and Masculinity in Fin-de-Siecle France</i> Antoine Compagnon makes a poignant contribution to an already rich critical literature on Proust's complex relationship to his Jewish ancestors by Evelyne Bloch-Dano, Maurice Samuels, Pierre Birnbaum, and others. Compagnon's search for the letter where Proust evokes his grandfather laying a pebble on his own father's grave becomes, through his meticulous account, an allegory of the triumph of research against error and loss. The master of what he called, in his classic study of Montaigne, 'The Second Hand or the Work of Quotation' has surpassed himself in this, his fiercest search. -- Alice Kaplan, author of <i>Seeing Baya: Portrait of an Algerian Artist in Paris</i> Literary scholar Compagnon offers an authoritative examination of the reception of Proust (1871-1922) by the French Jewish community following the author's death. * Kirkus Reviews * His book engages readers like a detective novel. * New York Review of Books *