Marcel the Magnificent

Proust is rapidly becoming the Mozart of the novel, one of those artistic figures before whom, from time to time, we delight to abase ourselves in various not always dignified postures of idolatrous adoration. One acquaintance of mine, for example, currently devotes his leisure hours to marking up A la recherche du temps perdu in different-coloured inks to indicate successive references to food, carriages, clothing etc. A lady in America is busy compiling a Proustian peerage, scanning the small print of silver-fork gazetteers and almanacs for stray duchesses, barons and counts, with the idea of giving us the whole coroneted galaxy in a sumptuous album, complete with escutcheons and portraits. Thus Marcel, the adrenaline-swallower and mashed-potato fiend, can turn his addicts into something little better than literary trainspotters or egg-collectors.

Richard Davenport-Hines, one of the novelist’s more rational fans, chooses to tackle him with the sort of stealthy obliquity for which ‘Proustian’ seems an entirely appropriate label.