The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 11 August 2009
by William C. Carter
Marcel Proust's biographers have been forced, more than most biographers of early 20th century writers, to pay particular attention to their subject's sexual and romantic history. This is because Proust makes sex and love such a profoundly central theme to his great multi-volume novel In Search of Lost Time. Also because of Proust's own sexual ambiguity and the subtle and complex way he transposes the gender and sexuality of those people he knew into the characters in the novel. Some of the romantic and sexual situations he describes in his book also lead the reader to ask just who this writer is and from what or whom does he draw his story. There are myriad characters, many of whom are homosexual, some of whom partake in peculiar sexual practices. Proust, himself, was surely gay, but the history is vague because of the taboo against gay men in the Paris of his time, despite homosexual behavior being legal. His novel was in fact groundbreaking in its sympathetic and open depiction of homosexuality in Parisian society both high and low. He depicts, also, sexual obsession as the Narrator seeks to control his one true love, Albertine, and to keep her from ever having the opportunity to betray him with another woman.
There is love and jealousy, sex and obsession throughout Proust's massive work. William C. Carter, who wrote a well-received and massive biography of Proust, has distilled that work down to this small book, to look specifically at Proust's romantic and sexual history, as well as the context in which these should be examined. Readers have often been eager to detect the real people who inspired Proust's characters. His novel has the tone of autobiography, but Proust himself would repeatedly deny that any one character was meant to represent any one person (though a couple real people are mentioned). So, explorations of Proust's milieu are a popular obsession of his fans. Here, Carter portrays Proust's life through the theme of his sexual and romantic experiences and the setting in which they were set and by which they were formed. We read of his early years as a schoolboy with earnest sexual yearnings, obsessing about other boys, coyly suggesting that they have sex with him before they're too old for it to be acceptable. He engages in intimate friendships with Reynaldo Hahn, his one true love, Lucien Daudet, and his employee, Alfred Agostinelli, who is often portrayed as the inspiration for Proust's fugitive Albertine. We read, too, of the upper- and lower-class characters Proust encountered, including society lesbians and bisexual busboys. Carter's writing is quick-witted and engaging. His book makes for compelling reading. He sensitively portrays Proust's obsessions while lightly touching on (but not ignoring the significance of) Proust's stranger preoccupations with his mother, young boys, and a certain sexual peculiarity alleged to take place in the nearby male brothels he frequented (purportedly as "research" for his novel). Pretty much any author, or any person for that matter, would come off as somewhat seedy under the light of such an examination. Proust is not an exception. We must learn that we can be somewhat uncomfortable with his proclivities while remaining in awe of his literary accomplishment. And we must also understand his culture, his personal history, and the constraints of his time. In the end, Proust was a tragic figure, living a solitary life without a permanent companion with whom he could openly share the world. He died a solitary genius. This book is engrossing and incredibly well-written. If this is a typical example of Carter's writing, then the reader may have no choice but to read his thousand-page Proust biography.