Rating: 
Summary: Excellent brief biography of Proust
Review: Although there is no shortage of books on Proust in English, and no shortage of enormously long biographies, there is a surprising lack of short biographies. Luckily, this excellent little volume by Edmund White fills a major need. While we have major long biographies like those of Painter, Tadie, and Carter, these may not be appropriate for someone wanting a brief overview. The trick with any biography of Proust is striking a balance between writing about Proust's life and Proust's art, not an easy task given the degree with which Proust based his work on events in his own life. It is virtually impossible to disentangle the two.This is a short book (around 150 pages), but in that brief span, White is able to touch on all the major events of Proust's life, the key relationships of his life, the major themes of his work as an author, and the ways in which Proust's life became the basis for his work. If one is unfamiliar with Proust before picking up this book, one will gain a first rate overview of him before setting it down. One thing that tremendously enhances the value of the book is an excellent annotated biography that gives a great overview of work on Proust both in English and French. White, who is a well known gay author, does a superb job writing about the myriad of contradictions in Proust's own work as a lightly closeted gay author. Although Proust's being gay is the worst kept secret of the century, Proust fought many duels over accusations that he was homosexual (or, an invert, as Proust would have put it). Proust was the first writer to write extensively about homosexuality, both male and female, but maintained a façade of heterosexuality to those who did not know him well. All in all, this is an excellent brief biography of the man many regard as the great novelist of the 20th century. I heartily recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about Proust.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent brief biography of Proust
Review: Although there is no shortage of books on Proust in English, and no shortage of enormously long biographies, there is a surprising lack of short biographies. Luckily, this excellent little volume by Edmund White fills a major need. While we have major long biographies like those of Painter, Tadie, and Carter, these may not be appropriate for someone wanting a brief overview. The trick with any biography of Proust is striking a balance between writing about Proust's life and Proust's art, not an easy task given the degree with which Proust based his work on events in his own life. It is virtually impossible to disentangle the two. This is a short book (around 150 pages), but in that brief span, White is able to touch on all the major events of Proust's life, the key relationships of his life, the major themes of his work as an author, and the ways in which Proust's life became the basis for his work. If one is unfamiliar with Proust before picking up this book, one will gain a first rate overview of him before setting it down. One thing that tremendously enhances the value of the book is an excellent annotated biography that gives a great overview of work on Proust both in English and French. White, who is a well known gay author, does a superb job writing about the myriad of contradictions in Proust's own work as a lightly closeted gay author. Although Proust's being gay is the worst kept secret of the century, Proust fought many duels over accusations that he was homosexual (or, an invert, as Proust would have put it). Proust was the first writer to write extensively about homosexuality, both male and female, but maintained a façade of heterosexuality to those who did not know him well. All in all, this is an excellent brief biography of the man many regard as the great novelist of the 20th century. I heartily recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about Proust.
Rating:
Summary: An Enjoyable and Readable Biography
Review: Edmund White, one of my favorite contemporary American Authors, manages to capture the life of Marcel Proust in a manner that grabs the reader's attention. The book is a short appraisal of Proust's life, with a refreshing focus on Proust's barely in-the-closet homosexuality. The illuminating look at Proust's psyche and private relationships provide a different way of interpreting his masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past. This easy-to-read biography comes highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: An Enjoyable and Readable Biography
Review: Edmund White, one of my favorite contemporary American Authors, manages to capture the life of Marcel Proust in a manner that grabs the reader's attention. The book is a short appraisal of Proust's life, with a refreshing focus on Proust's barely in-the-closet homosexuality. The illuminating look at Proust's psyche and private relationships provide a different way of interpreting his masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past. This easy-to-read biography comes highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: A good overview, but not very deep
Review: Hmm. I'm not sure what to make of this book. It's relatively brief (165 short pages), informative, well-written and easy to read. I'd read "Remembrance of Things Past" 15-20 years ago, but knew next-to-nothing of Proust himself. I was most interested in (1) his background, primarily his childhood; and (2) how it was possible that an unpublished author could get such a beast published. Edmund White addresses both issues to a degree (most satisfactorily on the second), but concentrates (not unreasonably, I guess) on people and events from Proust's life that make their way into the novel. I found White's "Marcel Proust" to be enjoyable, but it mainly whetted my appetite for a more substantial biography. Perhaps that's part of the purpose of this series of books.
Rating:
Summary: A good overview, but not very deep
Review: Hmm. I'm not sure what to make of this book. It's relatively brief (165 short pages), informative, well-written and easy to read. I'd read "Remembrance of Things Past" 15-20 years ago, but knew next-to-nothing of Proust himself. I was most interested in (1) his background, primarily his childhood; and (2) how it was possible that an unpublished author could get such a beast published. Edmund White addresses both issues to a degree (most satisfactorily on the second), but concentrates (not unreasonably, I guess) on people and events from Proust's life that make their way into the novel. I found White's "Marcel Proust" to be enjoyable, but it mainly whetted my appetite for a more substantial biography. Perhaps that's part of the purpose of this series of books.
Rating: 
Summary: Proust briefly?
Review: Proust by Edmund White is really good but the other one How Proust can Change Your Life was funnier, though I know that it was a different genre altogether. White has been accused of "homosexualising" Proust, in fact I think it is relevant, since others have always "de-homosexualised" Proust and his many affairs. White has been quite proud of his status as a gay writer and that does not limit him, only that the rather short biography sometimes lapses into an account of his failed affairs, sometimes with straight younger men. However, I cannot forget that moving passage in which Proust immortalized his Italian lover, Alfred Agostinelli who died of a plane crash. Though the affair was largely unrequitted, Proust spoke of it with great passion in the book. White's accounts weave back and forth from Proust's life and works, to a point they are linked seamlessly. I also like the rather passionate conclusions where White comments on love as seen by Proust, and one knows that the writer is intense and involved in his affair with Proust!
Rating:
Summary: Living to write and writing to live
Review: Someone at Penguin (James Atlas?) had a stroke of genius. The Penguin Lives series seems to takes its inspiration from seventeenth century writers like Izaak Walton and John Aubrey who churned out brief, engaging prose portraits of their contemporaries and other worthies. Readers know from the moment they pick up one of the Penguin Lives that they are not going to get a thorough-going, heavily annotated exploration of the person under scrutiny. They also know, when they check the page count, that they will not stall out midway and that they can easily finish it on a long weekend at the beach. The choice of "celebrity authors" to do the story-telling is also intriguing. Edmund White, for instance, may not have the final say on all things Proustian, but as a gay novelist and biographer of Jean Genet, we can be pretty confident that he will be forthright and honest when discussing Proust's sexuality and careful, appreciative, and insightful when discussing In Search of Lost Time. In fact, the balance White strikes in his discussion of the man and the novel is quite impressive. In contrast to many modern biographies that wallow in unflattering detail and leave the reader wondering how the subject ever managed to become a person worthy of being written about, White gives us a sense of what Proust was up against (personally and emotionally) without diminishing what he achieved. One piece of advice, if you do decide to buy this great little volume: Don't skip the bibliography. It's only nine pages long and White's descriptions of the books listed will point you toward some good reading (and away from some duds).
Rating:
Summary: SHORT BUT SWEET
Review: This is another in the series of Penguin Lives which attempts to give a biography of a famous figure in a short but well written book. This one on Proust is written by the well-known author of such books as Forgetting Elena and other acclaimed works of his own. In a lot of the Penguin Lives, the editors tried to commission another writer who had a lot in common with their subject. White is also a homosexual writer whose works have been vastly acclaimed and this gives him a "supposed" insight into Proust that other biographers have purposefully ignored. The entire life of Proust is hit on very efficently from his earliest years to his death. I liked the shortness of the book. I mean, I was interested in his life but not THAT interested to read a 500 page book about it. This short work was just right for the average interested reader. It was also written very well and enlightened me about many things about his life. For example, I always knew that he had become a recluse at the end of his life but never knew it was because of asthma. Something negative about the book was that time and again White seems to believe that there was no seperation from Proust's real life and that of his characters. He uses quotes from his novel to comment on his private life which in all authors never quite works. A novel is really not a true relation of a person's life. What really is? Everything is illusion or perception. Another thing that White does is try to put forth the proposition that Proust's homosexuality defined the whole inner cosm of his soul. I mean is Paul Auster or Chuck Pahlaniuk's soul simply filled with being heterosexual.
White seems to belittle Proust's life and his work by trying to accent his sexual preference at the expense of offering new insights into his personal character or novel. I feel that White had a secret agenda, or rather an UNsecret agenda alongside this book. Still, it is entertaining and worth a look if you just want a short look at the life of one of the greatest novelists of all time.
Rating:
Summary: Making the Enormous Manageable
Review: This is not a deep study on the great French writer's work, nor is it meant to be. However, it is a slim, fascinating and surprisingly penetrating insight into the life and writing of Proust. This tale is consciously told from White's perspective touching on issues and aspects about Proust's life he is interested in. This includes the way the world perceives Proust & interprets his work, how his homosexual status effected his work and public persona, the interaction between his writing & life and citing the most interesting work that has been done preceding Proust's life. It follows the basic time line of Proust's life and is related in a gossipy though highly intelligent fashion. The most interesting aspect of the book is the way it examines the way he is able to historically place the opinion of homosexuality at the time with other writers and the politics of the time and explain how it effected Proust's life. It relates how his life was really guided by a need for love and approval and how this was reflected in his relationships with his mother & lovers and filtered into his writing. The border between fictionalization and wishful thinking is finely tread in Proust's work because of this. White also gives an interesting insight into the way Proust worked as a craftsman playing with and mixing the genres of novel and the essay. Though this book touches on many interesting academic issues such as this, it is a very entertaining read and can be read easily by anyone who is a large fan of Proust's work or a complete novice. It is admirable White is able to touch on aspects of the writer's life that have not be ever deeply explored before.
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