Editing In Search of Lost Time (section)

== Critical reception ==
''In Search of Lost Time'' is considered, by many scholars and critics, to be the definitive modern novel.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Published Reviews|url=https://www.librarything.com/work/23844 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240216000353/https://www.librarything.com/work/23844 |archive-date=2024-02-16 |access-date=2024-02-14 |website=[[Library Thing]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Books of the moment: What the papers say |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-telegraph/152450838/|access-date=19 July 2024 |work=The Daily Telegraph |date=30 Nov 2002 |page=60}}</ref> It has had a profound effect on subsequent writers, such as the British authors who were members of the [[Bloomsbury Group]].<ref>[[Melvyn Bragg|Bragg, Melvyn]]. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20030417.shtml "In Our Time: Proust"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060310055038/http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20030417.shtml |date=2006-03-10 }}. [[BBC Radio 4]]. April 17, 2003.</ref> [[Virginia Woolf]] wrote in 1922: "Oh if I could write like that!"<ref>[[#ref Woolf|2:525]]</ref> [[Edith Wharton]] wrote that "Every reader enamoured of the art must brood in amazement over the way in which Proust maintains the balance between these two manners—the broad and the minute. His endowment as a novelist—his range of presentation combined with mastery of his instruments—has probably never been surpassed."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wharton |first=Edith |title=The Writing of Fiction}}</ref> During Proust's lifetime, on the other hand, while he would achieve success, he would also face criticism from critics of his work. According to ''[[Cambridge University Press]]'', "Proust's reception during his lifetime is always set against the backdrop of often-hostile criticism, frequently based on the myth of the sickly, reclusive snob writing from the safety of his cork-lined room."<ref>{{Cite book |title=Chapter 24 - Critical reception during Proust's lifetime |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/marcel-proust-in-context/critical-reception-during-prousts-lifetime/C8242BA1DBF2F41C2B43E75C5FBD13B0 |access-date=17 January 2024 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |date=2013 |doi=10.1017/CBO9781139135023.029 |last1=Elsner |first1=Anna Magdalena |chapter=Critical reception during Proust's lifetime |pages=183–190 |isbn=978-1-316-62624-5 |archive-date=17 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240117181811/https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/marcel-proust-in-context/critical-reception-during-prousts-lifetime/C8242BA1DBF2F41C2B43E75C5FBD13B0 |url-status=live }}</ref>

[[Harold Bloom]] wrote that ''In Search of Lost Time'' is now "widely recognized as the major novel of the twentieth century".<ref>Farber, Jerry. [http://www.chick.net/proust/moncrieff6.html "Scott Moncrieff's Way: Proust in Translation"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120207055543/http://www.chick.net/proust/moncrieff6.html |date=2012-02-07 }}. [http://www.chick.net/proust/PSTv6.html Proust Said That. Issue No. 6.]   March 1997.</ref> [[Vladimir Nabokov]], in a 1965 interview, named the greatest prose works of the 20th century as, in order, "[[James Joyce|Joyce]]'s ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'', [[Franz Kafka|Kafka]]'s ''Transformation'' [usually called ''[[The Metamorphosis]]''], [[Andrei Bely|Bely]]'s ''[[Petersburg (novel)|Petersburg]]'', and the first half of Proust's fairy tale ''In Search of Lost Time''".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://lib.ru/NABOKOW/Inter05.txt |title=Nabokov's interview. (05) TV-13 NY [1965&#93; |publisher=Lib.ru |access-date=2014-01-02 |archive-date=2020-11-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201108091917/http://lib.ru/NABOKOW/Inter05.txt |url-status=live }}</ref> [[J. Peder Zane]]'s book ''The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books'', collates 125 "top 10 greatest books of all time" lists by prominent living writers; ''In Search of Lost Time'' is placed eighth.<ref>Grossman, Lev. [https://web.archive.org/web/20070117063318/http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1578073,00.html "The 10 Greatest Books of All Time"]. [[Time (magazine)|Time]]. January 15, 2007.</ref> In the 1960s, Swedish literary critic Bengt Holmqvist described the novel as "at once the last great classic of French epic prose tradition and the towering precursor of the '[[nouveau roman]]'", indicating the vogue of new, experimental French prose but also, by extension, other post-war attempts to fuse different planes of location, temporality and fragmented consciousness within the same novel.<ref>Holmqvist, B. 1966, ''Den moderna litteraturen'', Bonniers förlag, Stockholm</ref> [[Michael Dirda]] wrote that "To its admirers, it remains one of those rare encyclopedic summas, like [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]]'s ''[[The Canterbury Tales|Canterbury Tales]]'', the [[Essays (Montaigne)|essays]] of [[Michel de Montaigne|Montaigne]] or [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]]'s ''[[Divine Comedy|Commedia]]'', that offer insight into our unruly passions and solace for life's miseries."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dirda |first=Michael |title=Bound to Please |publisher=[[W. W. Norton]] |year=2005}}</ref> [[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning author [[Michael Chabon]] has called it his favorite book.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/people/michael_chabon.php |title=Michael Chabon |work=The Morning News |date=May 24, 1963 |access-date=2014-01-02 |archive-date=2011-06-12 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110612014942/http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/people/michael_chabon.php |url-status=live }}</ref>

Proust's influence (in parody) is seen in [[Evelyn Waugh]]'s ''[[A Handful of Dust]]'' (1934), in which Chapter 1 is entitled "Du Côté de Chez Beaver" and Chapter 6 "Du Côté de Chez Tod".<ref>Troubled Legacies, ed. Allan Hepburn, p. 256</ref> Waugh did not like Proust: in letters to [[Nancy Mitford]] in 1948, he wrote, "I am reading Proust for the first time ... and am surprised to find him a mental defective" and later, "I still think [Proust] insane ... the structure must be sane & that is raving."<ref name=Mitford>{{cite book|year=1996|title=The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh|publisher=Hodder & Stoughton|editor-first=Charlotte|editor-last=Mosley}}</ref> Another hostile critic is [[Kazuo Ishiguro]], who said in an interview: "To be absolutely honest, apart from the opening volume of Proust, I find him crushingly dull."<ref>{{cite web |first=Maddie |last=Crum |url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kazuo-ishiguro-interview_n_6785824 |title=Kazuo Ishiguro On Memory, Censorship And Why Proust Is Overrated |work=The Huffington Post |date=March 3, 2015 |access-date=2019-12-18 |archive-date=2019-12-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191218133531/https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kazuo-ishiguro-interview_n_6785824 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Since the publication in 1992 of a revised English translation by The [[Modern Library]], based on a new definitive French edition (1987–89), interest in Proust's novel in the English-speaking world has increased. Two substantial new biographies have appeared in English, by [[Edmund White]] and William C. Carter, and at least two books about the experience of reading Proust have appeared, [[Alain de Botton]]'s ''How Proust Can Change Your Life'' and Phyllis Rose's ''The Year of Reading Proust''. The Proust Society of America, founded in 1997, has three chapters: at The [[New York Mercantile Library]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.mercantilelibrary.org/groups/proust.php |title=The Mercantile Library • Proust Society |publisher=Mercantilelibrary.org |date=November 9, 2013 |access-date=2014-01-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090624204600/http://www.mercantilelibrary.org/groups/proust.php |archive-date=June 24, 2009 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}</ref> the [[San Francisco Mechanics' Institute|Mechanic's Institute Library]] in [[San Francisco]],<ref>[http://www.milibrary.org/discussion/proust Proust Society of America] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130627043848/http://www.milibrary.org/discussion/proust |date=June 27, 2013 }}</ref> and the [[Boston Athenæum]] Library. Furthermore, in 2016, [https://proustsociety.org/ The Proust Society of Greenwich], a non-profit organization, was created to accommodate reading and discussing Proust to readers all over the world through monthly online sessions.