Warm Appreciation: Proust in Painting

I don't buy a lot of art books; I tend not to look at them a second time, and they are inconvenient to store. But here's a gem: Eric Karpeles' Proust in Painting, a collection of 206 paintings, each linked to the passage in Remembrance of Things Past in which it is mentioned.

The book is more than just a laborious exercise in archival research (altough it is that). Karpeles also offers crisp and pointed introductions to each pairing. And he throws in some shrewd addditional commentary in extensive footnotes (unfortunately, in tiny type). In a jacket blurb, the historian and critic Richard Howard expresses surprise in the discovery that Proust's ventures into art were not just window dressing, but "bearers of allusive meaning, which makes [Proust's work] the most powerfully inclusive experience in modern reading." One can only wish that somebody would do the same thing with Proust's music.

I was tempted to put up samples here, but Karpeles has his own website where he presents his own material graciously and with aplomb, so I am pleased just to let him speak for himself.