23 books like Proust and America

"Like the Bible, In Search of Lost Time embodies its own sources, myths, and criticism. Like an archaeological site, the novel has come to stand for a state of civilization.” Roger Shattuck is masterful in reach and insight; his “field guide” is aptly named. The reader journeys alongside him to traverse the vast and incomparable terrain of a seven-volume novel. Full of wit and provocation, he leads us through thick and thin, and best of all, he allows our own reading of the great work to revive within us, illuminating the very experience of reading that Proust so brilliantly mined.

Howard Moss brings a poet’s grasp of the ineffable to this enchanting study of Proust. His commentaries on the novelist’s use of psychology and philosophy, on habit and memory, are remarkable contributions to our understanding. He writes about In Search of Lost Time as “a total vision, not relying on any system outside itself for support. It is as if Dante had set out to write The Divine Comedy using only the facts of his own existence, without any reference to Christianity.” Moss was poetry editor at The New Yorker for almost forty years. A small gem.

It was because of Proust that I came to learn of the existence of the Polish painter and writer Józef Czapski. While a prisoner of war in the dark heart of Soviet Russia during the Second World War, this singular, cosmopolitan spirit devised a series of lectures on Proust and In Search of Lost Time as a vital counterpoint to the grim surroundings he and his fellow prisoners were forced to endure, offering them a context for addressing their lives and their bleak fates. Freezing, nearly starving, lice-ridden, Czapski mapped out Proust’s cosmology in several pages of his journal that served to fuel his talks. Scheherazade-like, night after night, he slowly revealed the already-legendary French novelist’s complex world of ideas and characters, giving voice to the life-enhancing magic great art bestows.

When the Hungarian-French photographer Brassai arrived in Paris in 1924, he taught himself French by reading Proust. As a photographer, he was fascinated by a similarity between his own impulse to make pictures and how the novelist used the photographic process as a metaphor for establishing or obscuring his character’s inner and outer worlds, as if both he and Proust were developing images in their respective darkrooms. Proust, Brassai saw, “used his own body as an ultra-sensitive plate, managing to capture and register thousands of impressions.” He was like a reporter with a camera—sometimes a portraitist, a landscapist, and, “sometimes Proust rivals the paparazzi.”

Most of the impressive artists in this exhibition catalogue did not call themselves Surrealists, but they all were engaged in the initial Surrealist project: to go beyond the tight constraints of Western “reason” to explore the subtle dynamics of the larger gestalt. Toward this end, many of them became interested in esoteric spirituality, portraying the female body as a site of creative energy as well as psychic and cosmological power. Some of them depicted shamanic initiation; some painted serenely detached goddess figures manifesting aspects of the physical world. More than 200 works were included in the exhibition. The featured artists include Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, Remedios Varo, Maya Deren, Lee Miller, Yayoi Kusama, and Francesca Woodman. Capsule biographies with striking photographic portraits of these extraordinary women close the book.

In researching Mary Edmonia Lewis, the nineteenth-century African-American sculptor I highlight in my book, I needed to understand Lewis as a person and as an artist.

Buick’s book explores Lewis’s art within the context of her life experiences and her passions, as well as how race and gender influenced her work. Although Lewis was our first African American and Native American sculptor, throughout her life Lewis was dismissed, praised, misunderstood, and eventually forgotten. Child of Fire gives voice to not only Lewis’ accomplishments, but explains the importance of her work to the canon of American art.

A foundational text of queer theory and queer literary reading practices, Epistemology of the Closet is absolutely irreplaceable.

Originally also an intervention in the AIDS crisis and in late-twentieth-century homophobia, the updated version places the original argument in historical context. The book elaborates on an influential practice later termed “closet reading,” wherein the reader analyzes homoerotic meaning that for various reasons, including censorship, legal repercussions, and social norms, the author couldn’t or wouldn’t state directly.

Sedgwick offers sharp and illuminating interpretations of such writers as Friedrich Nietzsche and Oscar Wilde. The sweep of the book extends from law, public policy, and Continental philosophy to literary study.

It came as no surprise to me, having spent so much time in the country, that Korea has long been and still is a sexist society, and this book illustrates that sexism brutally. When I lived there, my good friend, a woman, was a professor of biochemistry, and she struggled in her career the way men didn’t have to. Also, while people thought nothing of my going out to a pub with my male friends, it was somewhat scandalous when I did the same with this woman. In this novel, set in more recent times, a young woman has similar troubles trying to find her way. For many readers, it has served as a wake-up call for Korean society.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is recalled as one of the great essayists and speakers of the nineteenth century.

In a time of extraordinary change, Emerson helped forge a universal voice through the prism of the emerging American experience. Emerson ultimately conjured a unique, unmistakable American narrative.

This renders his work timeless. His essays—such as “Self-Reliance”—have been rediscovered by new audiences in the early 21st century.

In another moment of tumult and evolution, Emerson continues to offer actionable inspiration, encouraging everyone to cultivate the courage to experience life and work as a great adventure.

I recommend this book because it had a great influence on me as a young child. Moving through the world, particularly as a black woman, requires a great deal of self-reliance and resourcefulness. This book/essay speaks to universal truths that are often forgotten.

I found myself equipping my toolbox with quotes that have been relevant to my present day working life. I learned how to relate in a deeper way to myself and society while crafting a value system that, as I age, is allowed to become malleable.