The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 19 January 2011
by Marcel Proust
M. Proust is widely known as the author of the massive multi-volume novel In Search of Lost Time. His other published work is less known, not least because there isn't very much of it. This little book, styled a novella, was only recently translated into English for the first time. It is a collection of pastiches, in which Proust mimics and mocks the styles of several French authors and critics, most of whom predate Proust himself. The connecting theme is that of the title. In 1907, an inventor and hoaxer by the name of Lemoine claimed that he had discovered a way to create diamonds in a laboratory. He quickly raised huge sums of money from wealthy French investors, including Marcel Proust. The investors, of course, lost their money. Lemoine was prosecuted for the scheme, but disappeared from France before the trial could be completed. It was a major scandal at the time, and an embarrassment for the investors so willing to believe that riches could be so easily manufactured. (Of course, today we can and do manufacture diamonds, and even those that are mined aren't really all that valuable except in a tightly controlled jewelry market.) The scandal, too, was tied to French national wealth and the various financial deals that forged and dissolved alliances in turn-of-the-20th-century Europe. Anyway, the details of the scandal are not quite as important to Proust's book here as are the styles and personalities of the authors he is spoofing. The reader's appreciation of The Lemoine Affair may depend largely on his knowledge of French literary history or, at least, on one's interest in researching these authors. Several notable names appear, such as Balzac, Flaubert, Saint-Simon, Goncourt and others. On the other hand, even with a marginal background, the humor, wit and commentary that Proust weaves into his pastiches are still relatively evident, especially if the reader is also acquainted with Proust's other work. But the author's own personality is also evident. The level of upper-class name-dropping echoes In Search of Lost Time, and reaches almost absurd levels of intricacy in each of the small chapters. Proust's affection for long sentences and paragraphs still accents the voices of the other authors he is invoking. The book is an intricate entertainment in just 94 pages. It is often funny, even if the reader of more than a century later doesn't quite get all of the jokes.