The Mysterious Correspondent
New Stories
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'Startlingly audacious.' Literary Review
New writing from the literary master
Throughout Proust’s life, nine of his short stories remained unseen – the writer never even spoke of them. Perhaps he was not ready to share the early themes he was nurturing for his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. Or perhaps, in dealing directly with gay desire, they were too audacious – too near to life – for the censorious society of the time.
In these stories, published in English for the first time, we find an intimate portrait of a young author full of darkness, complexity and melancholy, longing to reveal himself to the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This revelatory collection by Proust (1877–1922), written almost two decades before he began to publish In Search of Lost Time, offers a lush and emotionally raw view into his evolution as a writer. The nine entries, annotated by footnotes, address topics such as love and suffering, homosexuality, and, of course, time lost and regained. As Friasse observes in his fine introduction, "the very fact of homosexuality" was a taboo subject in late 19th-century France, and thus the stories "comprise, hiding in plain sight, the private diary the writer entrusted to no one" (all but one were left unpublished). "In the Underworld" experiments with the form of a philosophical play, as Samson and the Comte de Quélus discuss the homosexual themes of Sodom and Gomorrah, which Proust would develop further in book four of In Search of Lost Time. The stories have plenty of scholarly appeal, but they are elegant on their own. In "Pauline De S.," one of several meditations on death, Proust displays a piercing accuracy and poignancy in describing a visit to a dying friend. "A Captain's Reminiscence," the only story to have previously appeared, features an older man's recollections of a corporal he was attracted to in his youth. The best may be the title story, about a woman who fancies a soldier, which is enthralling in its sensorial detail. Each tale features exquisite moments with expert annotations from Friasse. This volume is a fantastic discovery.
