100 Years ago....
Proust becomes a past remembrance
November 18, 1922
Marcel Proust, the French novelist who spent most of his adult life remembering and writing about things past, died today in Paris. He was 51. Proust passed his early years with the fashionable and the intellectual aristocracy. After the death of his parents, he withdrew from society and wrote about it in a dark, soundproof room.
Proust's major work is the cycle of novels, titled Remembrance of Things Past. He wrote majestic, long sentences and long novels about sensitivity and passion. But it was a memory, surging forth at the least provocation that fascinated Proust. The simple act of dipping a biscuit in tea would transport characters, and presumably Proust himself, back to childhood.
Article from "Chronicle of the 20th Century" ISBN 1 872031 80 3