Proust's Critics

At this very moment, I am supposed to be writing about monstrous romances and/or the nineteenth-century romance from Latin America, instead, I am reading about Proust. So, I will not provide a lengthy post, but rather a really rather startling quotation which perhaps resonates with some of us. In The Western Canon: The Books and School of Ages (1994), Harold Bloom writes:

Proust has had distinguished critics -- Beckett, Brée, Benjamin, Girard, Genette, Bersani, Shattuck (whom I prefer) among them -- but more than Joyce, Proust defeats his critics. (380)

I'm amazed by this, mostly because here is a critic writing about Proust and realising -- I hope -- that ultimately Proust will defeat him, like every other critic.

J.A.