How Proust Can Change Your Life

By: Alain de Botton

Narrated by: Nicholas Bell

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, letter, and conversations - and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful. Here, tendered in prose almost as luminous as it’s 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 by Alain de Botton. (P)2010 Bolinda Publishing

Critic reviews

"This engaging book is one of the most entertaining pieces of literary criticism I have read in a long while." (The Sunday Telegraph)

"De Botton's little book is so charming, amusing and sensible that it may even itself change your life." (The Daily Telegraph)

"A self-help manual for the intelligent person . . . witty, funny, and tonic." (The New York Times Book Review)

"Delightfully original. . . . As well as being criticism, biography, literary history and a reader's guide to Proust's masterpiece, How Proust Can Change Your Life is a self-help book in the deepest sense of the term." (The New York Times)

"Curious, humorous, didactic and dazzling. . . . It contains more human interest and play of fancy than most fiction." (The New Yorker)

Better than I thought.

I have several friends who have read "In Search of Lost Time". They are unanimous in their opinion that the book is long, sometimes boring, but worth the effort. I read this book as an introduction to Proust, not willing to commit myself without some inkling of how I would react to the real thing. I believe my choice was a good one. I have now read all the Proust that I need to read. This was an interesting book. It was readable and not as punative as the real thing. Enjoy it.

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.