Rediscovered early texts offer fresh insights from an author who created his masterpiece in self-isolation
A year ago, as the reality of Covid lockdown hit home, evangelists for the work of Marcel Proust spotted a window of opportunity. Domestic confinement had eliminated the usual distractions, and pandemic reading lists invariably carried a namecheck for Proust’s monumental seven-volume classic, In Search of Lost Time. A significant uplift in online sales was duly reported.
Cynics might point out that most purchases were limited to Swann’s Way, the first book in the series; only a post-pandemic audit will be able to establish how many readers journeyed through all 4,215 pages. But, whether he was read, unread, or merely dabbled with, literature’s patron saint of introspection was an appropriate hero for the era of self-isolation. In the last years of his life, toiling incessantly on the vast text, Proust rarely left the cork-lined cocoon of his bedroom. One biographer describes him writing “from a semi-recumbent position, suspended midway between the realms of sleeping and waking using his knees as a desk”. During the latest, longest, lockdown, this modus operandi may have become familiar to millions, albeit without a similarly significant end product.
