"Shattuck reveals that Proust must be read as carefully as a detective story, in which every detail becomes a clue to something else. At the same time, every page coruscates with a blend of passion and anxiety over the introduction of strange new elements. Shattuck writes on the ways in which Proust explores character, the false scent of social prestige, existential loss, humor, even memory itself.

Finally, Shattuck laments Proust's defenselessness against zealous editors and translators, and distances his subject carefully from the tradition of aesthetic decadence blazed by Baudelaire and Wilde."--BOOK JACKET.