How Proust Can Change Your Life

By: Alain de Botton

Narrated by: Nicholas Bell

Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letters, and conversations – and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.

Here, tendered in prose almost as luminous as its subject’s, is advice on cultivating friendships, suffering successfully, recognising love, and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on the first date. And here, too, is a generously perceptive literary biography that suggests that the master is as relevant today as he was in fin de siècle Paris.

©1997 Alain de Botton (P)2010 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Personal

Any additional comments?

Taste of what Proust might be about - focusing on major areas like friends, love, books. Elaborates on how beauty is found in noticing things that might otherwise be considered mundane. It is only through pain and difficult lessons that we really learn. Avoiding the common turn of phrase to really describe what is experienced rather than relying on someone else's perception. Richness in the minutia. Descriptions of Proust as a tortured individual.

Incredibly Excellent.

It's incredibly-intelligent, insightfully-brash vulnerable and overwhelming beautiful. A brilliant “read” as I also own the hardcopy and a marvelous audio rendition. If you’ve got 1 credit and 1 wish left - do make the right choice.

The Brilliance Of Alain de Botton

Alain unpacks Proust With Precision & Mastery. He has sage like ability to simplify the complex. He is truly the premier PHILOSOPHER of contemporary times.

Elitists can be humorous

Any additional comments?

I have tried unsuccessfully several times to read "Remembrance of Things Past." It's on my list of books to tackle....again. Knowing that Virginia Woolf was (apparently) totally taken with this book (at least for a period of time) helps....but then, one would have to know who Virginia Woolf is/was. So, therein, in my mind, lies the problem. The author makes some really interesting connections between Proust, his novels and real life. Some are "tres amusant." I learned a lot about Proust's life. Like many geniuses, he was outside the range of "normal" (however one defines that). Notwithstanding, there are many allusions and references to people, places and things that many folks would not know (trust me; I'm not assuming. I teach high school...people don't know a lot). So, it's funny, but you have to have a really, really, really good liberal arts education (a bad word these days0 to get it.

A nice petite primer on Proust

A nice petite primer on Proust. It travels similar ground as Bakewell's How to Live: A Life of Montaigne, Bryson's Shakespeare: The World as Stage, and even Wright's The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are. These books are not quite biography, not quite self help, but books that use the respective author's life/work/time as a peep stone into our own world.

Don't be distracted by De Botton's hyperbolic title. Neither he nor Proust is claiming any special power to change your life, but what they are trying to do is simply write something that will be read, perhaps appreciated. In the end they might even hope to deliver something that will be give their readers hints of how to live, how to love, how to suffer, and how to slow down and SEE the world.

utterly lovely

a great piece on a great lover of beauty. I highly recommend giving it a go

Proust explained

After trying to get through Swann’s Way and failing, I decided to give this audiobook a try. I have watched interviews with Alain de Boton and read two of his other books and have enjoyed how he clearly, and with obvious enjoyment, provides enticing ways of seeing the relevance of classical studies to our everyday lives.
The narrator of this audiobook manages to carry that same attitude of happy discussion, rather than pedantic lecture, that the author has displayed in his writing and filmed interviews. Such a pleasure to listen. I am now going to attempt, yet again, to read Proust’s works, this time with a bit more patience and appreciation. Thank you!

a lesson on how to appreciate your life.

this book was no struggle, and demonstrates reading proust attainable and worh the trouble.
thanks

De Botton delivers, as ever

As John Berger would say, "a way of seeing" that's differently perceptive and alters one's approach to Proust, literature in general and the world around one.

Gentle, inciting and above all, human.

What made the experience of listening to How Proust Can Change Your Life the most enjoyable?

Being aware of de Botton's accessible, yet insightful previous work, helped me enjoy his specific overview of a lengthy series of books I know I will never read or listen to. Knowing that this slim novel is as close as I will ever get to knowing a fraction of what Proust tried to incite his readers to think AFTER they put his books down helped me cope with my awe and wonder. Mostly I loved chuckling along with the whimsical self doubts revealed by the diverse reactions to Proust's monumental achievements by people involved with Monty Python, Virginia Woolf and of course the author himself. Being a fan already of the previous incitements to think further than the parameters of the aforementioned, I could trust this mini guide.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Although this is not quite appropriate for this book, being a Proustian Primer, it helps me to mention the author himself as a "character." His " presence" as he drives through the French countryside near Chartres on the way to find the fabled Proustian Madeleine, I was reminded of we the countless tourists who have travelled the globe, retracing/ revisiting/paying homage to Art and places which have figured previously only as figments of someone else's imagination. Proust himself would have approved, I think, because we are prompted to avoid "artistic idolatry" and relish the every day items we encounter, in the Proustian spirit.

What three words best describe Nicholas Bell’s voice?

Disappointing French accent. I am sorry. Previous reviewers have remarked on the gross mis pronunciation of the names, places, events which form the important foundations of this book. They were correct of course. What a mistake to make by the production company. Although the gentleman's voice itself is pleasant enough, the awful accent jars in nearly every line.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Not a pilgrimage to points of Proustian artistic interest.

Any additional comments?

How life affirming a gentle book can be. There is no " self help" tone to this book for which some of us are really grateful. Nonetheless, the wisdom of others can be mulled over with no entreaties that this, or any other knowledge is " the key."