A review by blueyorkie
How Proust Can Change Your Life, by Alain de Botton

3.0

To live better, do we need proustotherapy? This book suggests that it does, and he is right, although reading it was not necessary to convince me of this fact. So what is it that feels good about Proust? First of all, De Botton notes the Research's length: you have to take your time to read even a single sentence from Proust, and God knows if what we miss most today is time out, freeze frame, reflection. We run, we run, and we resort without ever knowing either after whom or after what. Proust takes dozens of pages to say nothing between sleeping and waking up; he dwells on all the changing expressions on Albertine's face. He scrutinizes the least of his emotions; in short (and there is no less Proustian than this "brief"), he takes the time to live and think. Besides, it does not live any better, sealed off as is between his bed and book, but lives more intensely, more truly than the one who touches the world. He lives by inhaling the essence of every moment. Of course, De Botton lingers (as Proust would have done with much more penetration) on details; he tires by the too much biography character of his remarks; he only repeats banalities on the work of a genius. Still, his book has one merit: it makes you want to continue rereading Proust and continue to waste time in it that we inevitably find.