One of the stranger aspects of In Search of Lost Time is to be found in the relation between author and text in terms of a trio of abject identities. In the service of giving his vast novel “universal” appeal, Proust, a half-Jewish homosexual with a reputation as a snob, identifies his semi-autobiographical narrator as a gentile heterosexual who tells us that he’s anything but a snob. These three marginal identities are then distributed among secondary characters (notably Bloch, Charlus, and Legrandin) who become the objects of quasi-anthropological fascination in the novel. Ladenson will discuss this peculiar dimension of Proust’s novel, as well as the critical commentary to which it’s given rise over the course of a century.

Book sale to follow program.

Sponsored by Yankee Travel.