This is probably the most approachable and happiest work on Proust ever written. It's a small book and easy to read, yet holds some nice surprises and insights. Some of the harsher reviews, I think, find fault with it for not being what it was never meant to be.
At only 200 pages, with plenty of illustrations and blank spaces, it's no substitute for reading Proust, and it's not intended as a scholarly monograph. A few found the title deceptive, and were disappointed to discover it is not a self-help book.
If you've read any of de Botton's other books, then you know he's intelligent, informed, cocky, irreverent and witty. Really an entertaining writer. He's also conceited, and probably speaks better French than most of his readers, which is always enraging, and if anyone wants to give him a one-star for that, I can certainly understand it.
If you have a somber veneration for Proust, believe me, de Botton's flippant style is going to make you reach for the anti-acid tablets. Still, there is an absurd side to Proust's life, as Proust himself saw, and to be fair, de Botton reminds the reader, that as in the case of the artist Elstir, it was Proust's whole life, the grotesque as well as the sublime, that brought his art to bloom.
Despite his flashy erudition de Botton makes grammar errors that would have sent Proust to Cabourg for his nerves. After awhile you wonder if the author doesn't purposely salt those in now and then just to give the book "sprezzatura" -- a kind of artistic nonchalance.
I've read Proust, and about Proust, more than I have any author but Dickens, and I still found much I didn't know, lots of it trivia (Proust's phone nunber) but also fresh thoughts and new ways of looking at Proust's life and work. The book is meant to be fun, so take it for what it is. I'm glad I made time to read it.
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About the author
A guide on how to make lemonades out of lemons, with examples!
What a sweet, witty book! The author derives life lessons from Proust's deeds and writings (as well as the characters in In Search of Lost Time) in a captivating way. More interesting yet, even though Proust himself enjoyed a rather lavish lifestyle he often points out the need to enjoy the simple things and contends that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Or as put at some point in his Opus:- When you walk around the kitchen, you will say to yourself, this is interesting, this is grand, this is beautiful like a Chardin.Maybe that's the lesson he learned from his own characters. Just like he would've said: a good book is greater than its author.
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2009
- Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2015
- Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2016
- Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2004
Top reviews from other countries
- Steve MReviewed in Canada on October 7, 2018
De Botton and Proust where's my inhaler?
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Client d'AmazonReviewed in Germany on January 25, 2018
A wonderful, witty and well-written book containing some simple, but surprisingly powerful perspective-changing ideas
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- Mattia DamaggioReviewed in Italy on January 25, 2017
Alain de Botton: wise, smart, good and clear
