How Proust Can Change Your Life,
Not a Novel

I first heard about How Proust Can Change Your Life, Not a Novel, from the author himself, Alain de Botton, who found me on the Internet. Within days of this first mention, I was hearing about it everywhere. My friend Michael Sostarich of the Marcel Proust Gesellschaft wrote from Germany to tell me about strolling by a bookstore in Paris at the very hour when de Botton had been there for a book signing. Dozens of friends and Proust correspondents wrote or called to tell me about this book. Most remarkably, Claudine O'Hearn, a Pantheon editor responsible for this work wrote to me and asked me if I would be willing to review it. And then, of course, other reviews began to appear in every publication I read, as lofty as John Updike's in The New Yorker, as unexpected as the one my friend Michelle Magrum found in Elle.

I began to berate myself immediately for not having thought of it first. Who could be a better inspiration for a self-help book than Proust himself, who had humanity so well figured out, and still emerged with his sense of humor intact? De Botton's book begins with a superlative and funny premise and does everything I hoped to do with my own Proust fixation: amuse the readers, pass along the wisdom and inspire The Big Read.

There is probably no one on the planet who could testify more than myself to the soundness of this book's objective. I know of no other person who's life has been so drastically changed by Proust than myself. Knowing that Proust had self-published removed the stigma of self-publishing Suddenly it was all right to stop trying to sell work to other publications, where editors would slash and burn until very little of myself was left; I could be my own publisher, my own editor, and like Proust, go into debt for it.. The resultant zine brings me into contact with Proustians worldwide, including the author of this book. I am interviewed by journalists as far flung as Finland and Brazil. The editors at major publishing houses are writing to me, instead of me to them. Can Proust change lives? I would say so.

The book finally arrived during a two-week stretch of my life when I labor intensely as a caterer to support my writing habit. I returned from a job at 3:30am after working a 16-hour day and saw the package on the table at the top of the stairs. Ripping the package open, I admired the cover, and made the earliest possible retreat to bed with book in hand.

The laughter began with the table of contents. "How to Suffer Successfully" made me laugh so hard I had to put the book down for a moment. I thought, oh dear, I'm hysterical from overwork. But after plenty of sleep, the book still made me laugh with delight.

De Botton does not suffer from my own folly of writing about myself so much. But he is very thorough in pointing out the great lessons of Proust on a variety of topics, not the least of which is "How to Put Books Down." It was one of the Proustian lessons that I was having trouble remembering as I found every available minute to read de Botton's book to the end, where he tells us about doing just that.

Of course, if you are already a Proust fan of some seriousness, some of the fun is spoiled by knowing exactly what de Botton is going to tell you about certain things. This book, however, is a charming read and the absolutely perfect present for any friend who has never managed to read Proust, could use some help with life's problems and loves to laugh. I will personally buy many, many copies to give to those friends of mine who are constantly asking for advice with interpersonal problems; regardless of my Proust quotes on the answering machine, my magazine, and my frequent savory references to the author who changed my life, there are still many loved ones who have not yet had their lives changed in the same fortunate ways as my own.

I wish to personally thank Alain de Botton for this fine piece of work that shares and neatly accomplishes my own objectives so well. A toast to him, as I make to my German friends: "Proust!"

P Segal