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Summary: Literature as salvation?
Review: This book deserves all the praise it has received. It does something I've never been able to do when talking to friends: it articulates the value of reading and studying literature. You don't have to have read IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME to enjoy this book. In fact, de Botton could probably have subsituted Joyce, Faulkner, or Woolf for Proust and produced a similar study. The self-help format seems appropriate (even if sardonically intended). De Botton seems to be directly addressing (and at times challenging) the earnestness of people who turn to books to improve themselves (and who expect books to show them the best way to improve those around them). My favorite chapters were "How to Suffer Successfully" and "How to Be a Good Friend." The final chapter, "How to Put Down Books," should probably be photocopied and stapled to the door of every library and bookstore. I cautions us against bibliolatry.One tiny gripe. De Botton does not always identify the works he is quoting from. We don't need to know specific page numbers, but it would be nice to know if a quotation is from one of the volumes of IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, or from an essay or letter. In one case, I wasn't sure if the quote was Proust's or Ruskin's.
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Summary: Question...
Review: I've read some of de Botton's other works, but having no prior experience with philosophy, was hesitant about this book, for the following reason: I know nothing about Proust. For those of you who've read this book, can you tell me if prior knowledge of Proust's works is necessary to fully appreciate this book (I have a feeling that it does). Thanks! PS. I just gave this book 4 stars b/c Amazon makes you pick one before you can display this message. I've never read this book, but 4 stars was the average rating, so that seemed like a nice, logical choice.
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Summary: Forget yoga--try Dr. Proust's exercises!
Review: How Proust Can Change Your Life is an easy read and its themes ambulate like John Cleese in The Flying Circus, however their target is always met with utmost accuracy. This is a rich and insightful book. What could have been an incomprehensible abstract mosaic turns out to be a triumphant effort to bring together Proust's eccentric life with his prolific writing. De Botton is able to touch on the paradoxical nature of humanity, alluding to the ambiguities of one of the greatest western novelists. De Botton's work is not a proscriptive self-help book. It is an account of a man struggling with life's triumphs and toils. It is a revealing account of Proust's struggles and the literature he produced as a result. De Botton never tells the reader how to deal with pain or loss, rather, he reads into his subject's life and humourously analyzies Proust's psyche. This is not an attempt to extemporize a pschology or philosophy that will enable us to deal with our vexing personal problems. It is a cogent attempt to open our minds to those problems and ambuguities that we may feel are abnormal, making them more normal. It is an intransigent work that is sanguine and lucid. A book full of irony and humor that I have read cover to cover and still pick up for a good laugh and pick-me-up. Highly recommended!
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Summary: an unusual, original book
Review: A reviewer wrote- "I'ts hard to imagine how Proust can change your life if you don't actually read Proust". That is true, but then on the other hand, never, while reading this book, did I get the impression that Alain de Botton was trying to replace Proust. I don't think he was trying to offer a guide to Proust, nor trying to write literary criticism or anything like that: After finishing the book, the impression I got was that this is more a self-help book (and quite a witty and funny one, actually, much better than the usual saccharine-sweet self help books) and less a book about Proust. The good thing is that "How Proust can change your life" will probably give you an appetite for more Marcel Proust...and that has to do with the clarity and lightness of touch with which de Botton writes: you can't resist his admiration for Proust, even though you might have objections to the way he chose to express this admiration: but then who says that books about philosophy or about literature have to be dead serious and heavy? I think Alain de Botton has written an original book, a book that's a kind of experiment, as it combines self-help insights with good literature and important ideas. If you read this as such, as an interesting experiment which may bring more people to Proust, then you won't really be able to find any fault in the book.
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Summary: loving proust at last !
Review: A French person cannot escape Proust in high school. But reading "how Proust can change your life" is a real lesson to French teachers ! You will REdiscover a new Proust, one you may never forget ! And rediscover a love for life at the same time, thanks to Alain de Botton...
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Summary: Wonderful, smart, a lover of books AND life
Review: Not that De Botton needs my 5 stars, he seems to be a power force of his own. But I just closed this book and loved it from start to finish. It was witty, intelligent, joyous and very very much made me ready to go read the MAN. He achieved something miraculous for a frightened self-taught reader, he welcomed me into the world of Proust. For that I doff my cap.
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Summary: Listening to Alain de Botton's Proust tapes changed my life
Review: And those of my friends, to whom I lent them. Perfectly recorded, and perfect for listening to in the car while confronting life's little obstacles: traffic, potholes, red lights, getting gas, etc. With the help of M. de Botton's guide to Proust, the path of life becomes clearer. A wonderful gift idea.
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Summary: Roll uproll up, tickets for the great Proust adventure here
Review: This book has been ludicrously dismissed as 'facile' by sniffy snobs. The dismaying fact remains that in this age of overcrowding media vying for our attention, you have to be pretty convincing to make people want to give a large chunk of their lives to a 4000 page novel about sponge cakes, silly aristocrats and sickly fops. De Botton manages this with ease. His book is an excellent precis of Proustian concerns - time, love, friendship, literature - told in deceptively simple language masking thoroughness and complexity. His aren't the last words on these subjects, they are starting points which allow the virgin reader a map when starting on the vast terrain of A La Recherche. His own prose is elegant, suggestive and sometimes very funny, while his emphasis on the personal is at the same time endearing, a way into the book, and true to Proust. He fills in his narrative with much biographical, historical and anecdotal matter, drawing on letters, newspapers, memoires, which are both illuminating and entertaining. His own method is seemingly the opposite of Proust's, immediately lucid and precise, but the form of his book follows the Proustian pattern, whereby the book heading in one direction turns in on itself, becomes a book about itself, its own creation, even negating itself as it tells us to abandon Proust if we want to be true to the spirit of Proust. The book isn't perfect - sometimes the prose is a little TOO easy; both Proust and De Botton come across as near-saintly figures, full of understanding and kindness, when the truth (with Proust at any rate) is much messier; and the last two chapters are a little rushed. But few books outside the thriller genre have delighted me and kept me reading feverishly to the end like this little trinket.
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Summary: The miraculous revelation cometh from the hand of Mr. de B
Review: If ever thou - in momentary agonies - feelest that self-affirmation is the remedy for the miseries of this life then, I say unto thee, this bijou volumette should lubricate the very coggery of thy mind and illumine the innermost sancta of a truly great soul, in which is perfected the quintessence of humanity. Perchance this then might reveal itself to be the volume of thine own most ravishing phantasms, and transports of inestimable worth!
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Summary: philosophy for mortals
Review: It's amazing, I read this book years ago an still remember it very vividly. Philosophy is usually not my kind of thing, but Alain de Botton makes for a very enjoyable and entertaining read. I read all his books and found them to be absolutely fantastic. Can't wait for the next one...
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