"SianeeL, Proust; His Lire axp Worx,"
Li, Pierre Quint. London, Messrs. Knopf. Price, 18 shillings:
Many readers have found Proust's work strange and desolating. No after reading M. Pierre-Quint's vivid account of his life, I beg to assure such persona that the work pales bet life, This descrip. tion of it is like a nightmare, writes; J.B, Priestly in the "Daily News," The actual biographical details need not detain us long. Proust was born in Paris in 1871, "His father became Inspector of Public Hygiene, and the family were fairly well off. Maxcel was a delicate boy, and soon became a martyr to chronic asthma, his early twenties be began to write, and founded a review, "Lo Then, after publishing one volume, "Les Plaisirs et lee Jour stopped writing seriously, and began to explore the salons. "He Became an authority on the life of fashion, and hardly.ever quite Paris. "But he also spent some time translating Ruskin. A few years before the war he went into retreat, to write his great work, The early volumes were held because for some time no publisher could be {ound to undertake them, But he wrote on and on. The war came and went. In 1919 he was awarded the Prix Goncourt, und his fame grew as rapidly as his life ebbed away. After terri ngs, he died in November, Litevature cannot show a more fantastic figur+ than Proust in his Inter the Boule was Vined with cork, to exclude the slightest sound, The windows were always shut, and the air heavy with repeated fumigations. Por ever mied the seemed like some fabulous "If he ever ventured into the country, to have a last look the blossoms, he travelled in a hermetically sealed carriage. slept during the day and worked or received his friends (sending. for them in the small hours) at night. The slightest touch of cold, a nols2, 4 perfume left him prostrate. Even his friends thought there war a touch of pose in all this, but it would appear that' acate' asthma had brought about "some kind of hypertrophy of the nervous system." Ho suffered horribly, and no man ever wrote under worse conditions. He wrote for the most part in bed in a strained position, and with his head close to the paper because of his failing sight,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.