The New Criterion

On the face of it, Proust was not obvious great-writer material. He was in some ways a dilettante, social butterfly, snobbery-deprecating snob (except when he sought out young lower-class men as sex objects), and an extraordinary hypochondriac and eccentric, wearing a fur coat and white gloves to the dinner table, and living amid cork-lined walls. He’d also take to his bed on the least excuse, and was extremely loath to get out of it.

That he was also a closet queen is easily understandable; in his day, Gay Paree was not all that gay-friendly. He was, however, very fond of women in a nonsexual way—perhaps an extension of his inordinate love for his mother—and may have had a couple of ephemeral heterosexual flings. But what he was is less important than what he observed. If ever there was a chronic, compulsive observer, spectating virtually at the expense of living, Proust was it. Yet in his masterpiece, In Search ...