Christopher Prendergast on Living and Dying with Marcel Proust

A conversation between Christopher Prendergast and Alice McCrum at the American Library in Paris. Filmed on 15/11/2022 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom.

Marcel Proust expert Christopher Prendergast discusses the enduring presence of In Search of Lost Time and the meaning of treating literature as life.

From recent features at the Musée Carnavalet and the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme to uncountable commentaries and historical studies, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time remains an object of public fascination and adoration one hundred years after its publication. No one is more qualified to speak on the depths of Proustianism than Christopher Prendergast, general editor of Penguin’s English reissues of Proust’s magnum opus. In new work Living and Dying with Marcel Proust, Prendergast maps out the life, mind, and Recherche of Proust, revealing the genius of the author and the enduring importance of the text. At the American Library, he celebrates life, literature, love, time, memory, and Marcel Proust.

About the speaker:

Christopher Prendergast is a fellow of Cambridge University and the British Academy. A writer for the London Review of Books and New Left Review, he is an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Officier dans l‘Ordre des Palmes académiques. Living and Dying with Marcel Proust was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Publishers’ Weekly Most Anticipated Work of 2022.

Evenings with an Author is generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.