Zombie Proust

Jerome Prieur is a writer and filmmaker. He holds PhDs in law and literature, the latter supervised by Helene Cixous. His books and films bear witness to an obsession with traces of the past, images, archives, and the presence of the departed. He is the author of around twenty books, including Roman noir, on Gothic literature (notably, The Private Memoirs and Confession of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg); Rendez-vous dans une autre vie, in search of the ghosts of Pompeii and of the 1900 Paris Exposition; La moustache du soldat inconnu, in which he claims to relate 'his memories of the Great War'; and recently Regarder et ne pas voir, a chiaroscuro portrait of a witness to the events of the 1930s and '40s. In his latest, multi-award-winning film, Sentinels of Forgetting, the protagonists are the sculpted figures on memorials of the First World War.

'Though some might quibble [...] with the bold English title [...] the book has been excellently translated by Nancy Kline, who captures with aplomb Prieur’s by turns whimsical and melancholic tone [in this] delightful homage, which, avoiding the blandishments of those legions of books that form, in Edmund White’s words, the “Proust-industrial complex”, refuses to distil its subject into self-help bromides or merely to summarize him.' — Luke Warde, 'In Brief', Times Literary Supplement‘Prieur defines his search for Proust’s restless phantom, rendered in 72 mini essays or compressed prose poems, as an allusive and immersive quest. By seeing through Proust’s “eyes/I,” Prieur retrieves his narrator Marcel’s involuntary memories from In Search of Lost Time: the uneven paving stones from the Guermantes’ courtyard which in turn trigger the memory of uneven paving stones in the baptistery of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, and telling traces from Marcel’s childhood bedroom at Combray. […] These allusions to Proust’s novel represent the real madeleines—creating a sense of panoramic movement of the writer’s universe—infinitely more palpable and dreamlike than their literal replicas entombed in plastic at 102 Boulevard Haussmann, thus transporting the reader back into Proust’s cyclical, loamy text.[…] Prieur’s text, while purportedly excavating Proust’s life and his literary legacy, actually celebrates the complex, alchemic collaboration, not only between the artist and key individuals in his orbit—family members, chauffeurs, cooks, housekeepers, lovers, and society personnages—but also those who either outlive him or are born years after his death, even living in farflung countries or continents.’ — Thuy Dinh, Asymptote'Through meticulous research and poetic insight, Prieur delicately gathers fragments from Proust's life and work, weaving them into a hauntingly vivid portrait of the man behind the masterpiece. Zombie Proust goes beyond biography; it's a resurrection. With care and reverence, Prieur offers us new eyes through which to see the writer, revealing a Marcel Proust who is as deeply human as he is a literary icon.' — Ryan McMenamin 'Prieur has succeeded magnificently in bringing his portrait of Proust to life' — Le Monde 'Every page is shot through with the feeling of overwhelming, enthusiastic, affectionate gratitude that readers of In Search of Lost Time feel for Proust the writer and Proust the man.' — Le Matricule des anges 'Scarcely any other book on Proust evades with such effortless skill the classic dilemma of whether to relate everything to the work or to the man. Prieur resurrects them both as a single phantom, in the night time favoured by Proust, perfectly conjuring up scents and tastes, with a love which owes nothing to neurosis.' — Journal du Dimanche