Seriously how did he do it ? I mean he had no top literary education, just a high class background...

had a philosophical foundation with ruskin and read lots of other stuff

>one of the best novels ever

Kill yourself

Several things.

First, french education back then was real, and he had serious literary connections from a young age. He was an intimate friend of whatever Daudet, son of Alphonse Daudet, and later on he made friends with Anatole France, a great literary figure back then, as well as many others.

Second, >didn't practice a lot by writing lots of lesser stuff
is just plain wrong. He wrote two major books and another collection of vignettes (Les plaisirs et les jours, Jean Santeuil and Contre Saint-Beuve), all of which were just preliminary forms of ISOLT. All of them were clearly reworked into his final novel. The famous "mother/son kiss goodbye" scene from Swann's Way was written 15 years before he even started properly writing ISOLT.

I remember reading a huge, 2-tome biography of his by some english guy, really good stuff.

Pic related, all three of them were writers and took it up the butt.

> I mean he had no top literary education

creative writing courses are a meme.

english literature departments are like care-homes for a dying cultural endeavour

Who wrote the biography? I want to read it.

pic related. The first edition was one single volume, but I got the second, expanded edition, which was two volumes. Really good stuff, hope you can find it.

I also read this one here, not a biography but something like that, by Proust's last maid, the one who lived with him locked up in the corked room and stuff, and one of the models for the Francesca character. Pretty good as well.

amazon.com/Monsieur-Proust-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590170598/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1469048776&sr=8-4&keywords=marcel proust biography

>but I got the second, expanded edition, which was two volumes.

Let me correct myself:
>This classic biography was originally published in two volumes in 1959 and 1965 respectively. It has now been revised and updated into a single-volume edition.

He's a white male.

but what would happen to all that unused semen?

By the way, allow me to re-share this gem with you guys. I've read Proust on my own, but reading this guide afterwards made me appreciate the whole book so much more. Worth a read, for sure.

>Proust's Way: A Field Guide to In Search of Lost Time by Roger Shattuck

For any reader who has been humbled by the language, the density, or the sheer weight of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Roger Shattuck is a godsend. Winner of the National Book Award for Marcel Proust, a sweeping examination of Proust's life and works, Shattuck now offers a useful and eminently readable guidebook to Proust's epic masterpiece, and a contemplation of memory and consciousness throughout great literature. Here, Shattuck laments Proust's defenselessness against zealous editors, praises some translations, and presents Proust as a novelist whose philosophical gifts were matched only by his irrepressible comic sense. Proust's Way, the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship, will serve as the next generation's guide to one of the world's finest writers of fiction.

Proust's Way - Roger Shattuck.epub
>u.pomf.is/umejus.epub

im looking to read ISOLT relatively soon, is it a difficult undertaking? how should i go about it, any different method than for a regular book

To become a great artist one must have great skill.
To become famous one must have a lottery ticket

treat it like 10 books in a series and you should be ok

>Pic related, all three of them were writers and took it up the butt.

lol

The post shows that you really know your stuff, but to end with that punch line...it was glorious.

Do you happen to recall which particular translation does this biographer praise?

Because he started with the fucking greeks

Because he started with David Foster Wallace

This

I read the first book six months ago. Haven't touched the second book since.

trips

...

No, it is not difficult. It's not cryptic whatsoever but pretty straightforward expressing its themes, developing characters, etc. In order to enjoy it more you just need a bit of knowledge about French literature and arts overall, which most educated people already have, so don't worry too much. ISOLT it's actually pretty enjoyable and re-readable.
Plebs usually complain about it being too long, boring, too many descriptions, not being A Song of Ice and Fire, and the usual stuff people who are not very well read use to dismiss these kind of books.

Robert Greene did a good small biography on Proust on his book "Mastery" which resumes your question op.

And in short he was reading and learning for DECADES before writting his book.

Drive, focus and time, a lot of time that's it, it's what allowed him to write one of the best novels ever written.

I love Carmel Stupor

>and learning for DECADES before writting his book.

This, but also, he actually was writing the book for decades. In fact, his first two novels, Jean Santeuil and Contre Saint-Beuve, can be argued to be simply two failed attempts at writing ISOLT, which led him to the third and succesful attempt. People tend to forget this, maybe because the greatness of ISOLT overshadows the mediocrity of the previous two novels.

And even still, I would argue, ISOLT really is far from perfect. I believe sometimes it does get too wordy and repetitive, and some of the dinner and party scenes go on for waaaaay to long, but the book hits so many highs that the lows are overlooked.

Just an example, on the last book, Time Regained, last third of the book, as he's entering the last of the Guermantes parties, after having been made to wait in the library. He meets all of the characters from the book one last time, and he goes into detail about how much each one of them has changed, what a hard time he's having recognizing them, etc (he hasn't seen any of them in about 10 or 20 years). Proust finds a unique metaphor to describe, for each character, how their youthful self has been hidden, replaced or displaced by their old self. Great writing, but so tedious and repetitive at the same time. I think Proust could have benefited from some editing, just a bit though. Am I alone on this?