Proustian Uncertainties

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian revisits Marcel Prousts masterpiece in this essay on literature and memory, exploring the question of identity--that of the novels narrator and Prousts own. This engaging reexamination of In Search of Lost Time 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 marginalize his part-Jewish background. Does this reflect the authors 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 authors life doesnt give obvious answers. The narrators 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 seminal work.