Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Mirages and Mad Beliefs: Proust the Skeptic
    Mirages and Mad Beliefs: Proust the Skeptic
    Mirages and Mad Beliefs: Proust the Skeptic
    Ebook390 pages13 hours

    Mirages and Mad Beliefs: Proust the Skeptic

    By Christopher Prendergast

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Marcel Proust was long the object of a cult in which the main point of reading his great novel In Search of Lost Time was to find, with its narrator, a redemptive epiphany in a pastry and a cup of lime-blossom tea. We now live in less confident times, in ways that place great strain on the assumptions and beliefs that made those earlier readings possible. This has led to a new manner of reading Proust, against the grain. In Mirages and Mad Beliefs, Christopher Prendergast argues the case differently, with the grain, on the basis that Proust himself was prey to self-doubt and found numerous, if indirect, ways of letting us know. Prendergast traces in detail the locations and forms of a quietly nondogmatic yet insistently skeptical voice that questions the redemptive aesthetic the novel is so often taken to celebrate, bringing the reader to wonder whether that aesthetic is but another instance of the mirage or the mad belief that, in other guises, figures prominently in In Search of Lost Time. In tracing the modalities of this self-pressuring voice, Prendergast ranges far and wide, across a multiplicity of ideas, themes, sources, and stylistic registers in Proust's literary thought and writing practice, attentive at every point to inflections of detail, in a sustained account of Proust the skeptic for the contemporary reader.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateJul 21, 2013
    ISBN9781400846313
    Mirages and Mad Beliefs: Proust the Skeptic
    Author

    Christopher Prendergast

    Chris Prendergast was born in Birmingham in 1987. He has an MA in Creative Writing from Keele University. In 2009 he won the Charles Swann award for his dissertation on David Berman’s Actual Air. He has taught creative writing at various levels and is currently writing his doctoral thesis on the post-industrial status of Birmingham.

    Read more from Christopher Prendergast

    Related to Mirages and Mad Beliefs

    Related ebooks

    Literary Criticism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Universe in a Sentence: On Aphorisms

      Sep 18, 2019

      “An aphorism,” Friedrich Nietzsche aphoristically wrote, “is an audacity.” Exploring the pithiest of phrases, from Ben Franklin to Susan Sontag. The post The Universe in a Sentence: On Aphorisms appeared first on The Millions.

      11 min read

    • Article

      Marks of Significance: On Punctuation’s Occult Power

      Jul 31, 2019

      The manipulation of the odd symbols we call letters and punctuation lend themselves to the discovery of greater truths, guideposts to a type of paradise. The post Marks of Significance: On Punctuation’s Occult Power appeared first on The Millions.

      11 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Nov 21, 2021

      by Bryan Walpert Mākaro Press — $35 It needs to be made clear that this is a science fiction novel, specifically of the time travel variety. It takes place in three alternating narrative streams, one of which is told in reverse, so that the couple wh

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Classic Work Of Unbridled Joy

      Aug 26, 2021

      ROBERT BURTON CLAIMED TO KNOW not only the date but the precise hour — 9pm — at which he had been conceived. How he might have arrived at this information is very much an open question. Perhaps English parents in the late sixteenth century were freer

      3 min read

    • Article

      Stories in Formaldehyde: The Strange Pleasures of Taxonomizing Plot

      Oct 2, 2020

      There is something to be said about the cool rectilinear logic that claims any story can be stripped down to its raw schematics and analyzed as fundamental, universal, eternal plots that have existed before Gilgamesh’s cuneiform was wedged into wet c

      16 min read

    • Article

      The Birth Of The Semicolon

      Aug 1, 2019

      The Birth Of The Semicolon
      4 min read

    • Article

      Reading Proust Aloud: ‘How Can It Be That Deeply Flawed And Terrible Humans Have The Capacity To Create?’

      Nov 12, 2022

      In September 2018, my reader, Anthony, opened Swann’s Way, the first book of In Search of Lost Time, on our front veranda and read aloud the seemingly innocent opening line: “I used to go to bed early”. From that moment – and almost every evening for

      5 min read

    • Article

      Our Moment of Collective Rupture: The Millions Interviews Edie Meidav

      Jun 13, 2022

      "I wanted the story to behave as a kind of Aeolian harp, a moment being played as if wind on strings." The post Our Moment of Collective Rupture: The Millions Interviews Edie Meidav appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      On The Cult Of Craftism

      Oct 14, 2022

      If craft is a writer’s fundamental heartbeat, then craftisim is hypertension. The post On the Cult of Craftism appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Thomas Bernhard (1978)

      Dec 1, 2020

      WHEN, JUST over a month ago, Thomas Bernhard’s last play, Immanuel Kant, premiered in Stuttgart—a play in which the philosopher from Königsberg, accompanied by a servant, a parrot, and his wife, undertakes a long, long sea voyage to New York—most Ger

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Forgotten History of the Chapter

      Nov 27, 2023

      The chapter possesses the trick of vanishing while in the act of serving its various purposes. The post The Forgotten History of the Chapter appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      A History And Theory Of The Line In English Language Poetry

      Jul 1, 2022

      For me, and for generations of US readers before me, poetry has been defined by the appearance of the line break on the page, that ragged righthand margin signaling that something is at work in the arrangement of the words on paper beyond mere transc

      59 min read

    • Article

      How The Sonnet Turns

      May 1, 2020

      This essay is adapted from a lecture delivered at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, on January 10, 2010, at the winter residency. My thanks to The American Poetry Review for their graceful and gracious assistance in the adaptation

      30 min read

    • Article

      Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency

      Jul 14, 2017

      I read non-fiction books that I thought might indirectly tell me something about fiction, even though they were really about something else. The post Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Intriguing And Diverse

      Jun 16, 2022

      Genius of the Fern Loved Gully Amy Hale Strange Attractor Press 2020 Pb, 336pp, £20, ISBN 9781907222863 Ithell Colquhoun’s star is in the ascendant. Born in India in 1906, she lived a life amongst the Surrealists in the Thirties and early Forties, ha

      9 min read

    • Article

      W.G. Sebald and the Malthusian Tragic

      Mar 28, 2018

      In 1798, an unknown curate named Robert Thomas Malthus published the essay that would give his name to a new breed of anxiety. He argued that the growth rate of the population would always exceed the growth rate of the food supply, inevitably reducin

      14 min read

    • Article

      Humble Words Organized Beautifully: Ward Farnsworth on Style

      Aug 19, 2020

      Farnsworth's philosophy of composition is wonderfully anarchic when compared to the partisans of prescription who dominate the writing classroom and the style-guide racket. The post Humble Words Organized Beautifully: Ward Farnsworth on Style appeare

      12 min read

    • Article

      Hearing Voices and Talking Back: On Bibliomancy

      Mar 29, 2018

      I. Bibliomancy is a form of divination in which one consults a book for answers and advice. The process is simple: Stand the book up on its spine. Ask your question. Let the book fall open to a random page. With your eyes closed, place your finger on

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Classical Werewolf

      Nov 4, 2021

      Daniel Ogden Oxford University Press 2021 Hb, 280pp, £25, ISBN 9780198854319 Daniel Ogden has established himself as the go-to academic for scholarly, text-based surveys of supernatural motifs in the Ancient World, into which context this book fits a

      8 min read

    • Article

      Walkabout

      Sep 1, 2019

      Walking Backwards: Poems 1966–2016 by John Koethe. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018, $40.00 cloth. A BOOK of poems by definition poses a paradox. Unless it contains a unified and intentional epic, any collection of lyric poems comprises a series of e

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Mirages and Mad Beliefs

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Mirages and Mad Beliefs - Christopher Prendergast

      r2^book_preview_excerpt.html}ْƕ`2""UwUIqdz<"@8Q'Zuk_2{}*ʈ~.x}.6!/w|쓯Iek*^~O>'_s/ꓯ߼0&M;r.k\l ]X|臥qq]߇9IXw\Gp}9,48/aq'wqi^nߌmNA=ͳ[pn [ eʒg7-ѷy\[7-?\A7zӋ_?hHqfMsO!BqϠMaY{$OPQ49wDuO[cZ?媝uhRMKipt[7ߦ{氄a2ȣ䛃w]RmmWdO੅w8.nσS$_a7rA!+ǝ81$v3qIb#9%)^˒cuʹn:t9Z<#9V7p_< 69da}n}ls0D0n:=F /Ċ"eC {䡠Qgo q38?qτ؋+[}<>z9vXg_/'בE}ae!>Uđ+ng-8evCYq,IrEѸQ1PHlDΒhnJ\~\VLÝOgu5(pbkK!;BH^^6mBʿ)A+dw1ѣ>ٛT=$mzGaϋ#GYS)0?S8BcGD.[n{~"U^Bx_( (adXaW75em;ۯg5iӸ6fljWLF\]'=u`潨y`P7{5Gh1lIE*}39iAGvm$;> ;;0!߯.x>nGQXX cǍ);*?G qz&r4q[mu_N¥\n&X9 |*FU֍0K,4q·b$*pp3CkYf+ :3=~ ³ʕ[-tpܻVVFJdVogrb^6A ~m*,bT2QʔDY N~ s Z1:洌prj"XF,DW= 5GpTg~(f? 78uߊ66nT᪓xFzzXO -*Qr+Կܤ<:0׍Yʘ5zQx@*kesAyX8dViQJ & TaC? noALm#~.u F+MыG#}tQx fP>BqK^\&(.~b0߃16=DM!Mlry(~0QagFa?+O"* ZMя*u^ _E1Tnx b,WtEƺH+(ڋSՕl餬 `w!|41$i䌺>b!eQ-?+޽Kp!J/_G4 rAwctbUɎ2v;x,҅(r.Lvo7fy|ŕa~.:a"ЇBӘCY?Sjchơ ZFkJqH⏡ qZ>wHN మMzd yXUqٴ/ƹqQ(#,XZظD W a$5'5]ɣ /*N'7w>M(5\lpKX|F0{rQE ;} A)`$ɇ4dr$*Ax7FZ!#,B'P7@T+lFW Fl g]ޔG&-p]*OA.JĥGD!,+M r^Pѕlaa3l q7$YP܋Hu DLu=c(T'˭Ŗ޶FAnB4bz wlRd"UDTTRw;woAAE70j2YİH}MngY$ 848ExH.YwRgp/Ǘ8Mo^ UDCCQC`7$bQVߌKx9䗟4omFA?HoDG{fe_fZ J y]'mL°O+bRq],18 u%#/t%|R?_NЁ$9QgBMobCxCMD7tE1fa%dpȉ8344@xnbIA]Zݸn,duhoz ̚%_0R #o񔕿;zzhpY8gμLWk'ډ(odAx<̢\O-,\L9 TDfAꉨAb3H OrNj~d+Y9 I6zz.B:1w. V_w5EMSʻmY2; H)zwG*vL k$>lFnv}EmYyJ$Xͭ5x })ߙsY'gѐVOw/I$aɧ?__$"M.Yb$R:[sH;>I}"n!P_tX"LܸZ*ީB&`v $K ?NvxW! (PbԵ+Pe'*d@t+b<'r tA<ƟrG`,} m=WCd9MI`VH [ ,uí׊S15hL KZxʐ}eH/j __uG[b?^J !bfrdaN1FyyD@Ѐ;O틟(3GY9Q""BH !3KgF ap-YńKLx#iqU@0Co4KcA|~>ظ*~"V -׽0:m9u9d2˽?jp\BGh&ի _رU>*QOI3H ĨlA R_E,jOe&E)mV4{\T! 0[Υgv-+0"1E9H/O AdH?!r'+lrt*^W>M;kEJī=##ۋ:*&j{5 8k$(ٞ%"a,W++)fA#Gk@N,WmYh*F6.u^K>^K0Kn2(T9ǤP-(M.`1 ˬAhu-]geh"(nlGi*P1;Oy!BN edFOc.x HIe^ [@ ȩx_:k!hYry3Fpt$A|X"#q$Ώ.\-B'S퍬we9 .l'2U" ԫ}/aYyJs+tʰ @Vv X{Qڇ?}jiԏPKTԡPhX 8h(8jJ_1"L^OƠzء+xPrr <ɻ*j$A6d;.Nݚpіf勰c~}͛(\\Ǔn*L{5ʲPm HܙBUKjis+i5d1b"!lx4g诘a~?P=psC%r+S 6 >Nx2ED,7ϫVS5M.Х)y>"eN,\0 >pYCd^δ=9rppq ڦL,Vx#QK[ͪRvY9ʖȈ7Q8w#&eOVBoq[M$SPCVLOR8A$V.;w"qւX1LoYrV_Hѽ2"7[txZSl=ab}@6ܶ( PEלrljQQ3ƹ* <"﫼^ _3#{o^߯͑45/Lv0kk݉ 2*'1F.pKbšE4V;Nb)ųVO1RD4p~^'0 Zs[?[+ xT쁋;xgxgT<*hd-,4@B!*%TX ugp'l`s" Y ,^,6X.^g_=kr!{ feH8!Zu!N;14+^JVz[!J&d1ա d1GCh9 m)t[$^H"hP n.8'Uf-oc$Es/8AE Ymgv{fR30=KmEVV2 ίwܰGde-*hj?;%$rbm!jtX:_r -c";#< aB(иl)yy(Pr9,ۨ52kF:U+dJ>f.Vs.&S͵љdY9̣u*Uba쥞\br롪ͷ$4=S*.LT*e\0jMm_ '(u**?i>-80G)iiM%,} 5kRbzrD uDSn|)β T> :PQL(ub!.Jy췺Fp UH #h!ZQ :ۡ {[H/jT6XۡI-̿~Wץ2 jk.-T%/|0ؠ,Ȍ5jĚ3-yZv(n5(T/%λx"j⑳MLNJ{ϝR h3O@`K1랸3v&͒3|R+fL@b ]Zcal?~ɭ?hRL ľ7473FKaG D!un 8ZcפE/f\'{|Ya1XAmU }+Mv_D>PH@YUF9@sSY.\wS!'+[zϪSCґ0 rJV YMU"jq?J7K5Gjx(;V4Ybyj.%P1˜dڊvoԖ5_TY~YuwkiD;@,.kpJSr`sƵ[zZJa_2@u>σ)]4+dk:RXG!8K"8L#_oMi@ -Q5G\j6V=@Qc$)0]jC $_^)\Xkۮ )InBs5j;'AǢ<^ly >w=o:CrR4.ƅFIhGkjeerLc>L@3Cb\uj$ٛGt[ّQDpwěCjbB]oaL %ߠ0FotCt~")?"\ߏD0NePk#Ob(o;aL&F=?w|+VB.g;,F[%ǜkB{ c.~"f5hoDqUjgIUCi !5\w zQn#{w/zJD|) :鲇av_!eeP0( 2Y&*odl.4w6Wd =x6xͽ . ⬇RR"ڧY[s&_)OL=10rsiCʥB H[Q!F0 AWAٵPd n>S;|n,/~ҡ, `%VH3;)f܊r9{J\LY6 gѱ~MxaGS 묟RUtog-KdD!'lCkE4edEzhEQRB᠕z'6Ar1֙Ě$f"uIUeMmer8834Q SryWamRkÀOIhUDA8øLnh5,{K95^]m쁍$j)IF8;åBh%Ne$5%Lm!VjdrSl23bE}b?0]is rHHNr4Axam(WaM&H*{.%jY=_m#l&>gTc+Z?jԌWjHۄhO*H ֊4 sfJ ({k?=rTA'&<^ٯdNVm-x'8ʥF P]1m'2|e!N)ovXgYOX`2+V d+"tG,PT5JPIr7bJWj d^`.é@a2VuI+5͇p, ko͘j/瘤ř^'.jk4i􀆤-dJhӼ劰5VJXeǦ5Y@ 4DN1b2 6sۑgs;Vz6}fRB hܯDv'ý rZ gc,(QfzP6ĔbZYgb:qAD'laXqxx_;5=,2 v4 t-6v9errr$G1%ySsUƒ6f;sg >YUladS{rװf&_^Syt2WՔr.Ko֦y rbC=DH?0iDSg,b|1J\1mABo}uON15d0m_<U3ʜסs#3TIԂz; 5rMә޴HҦDLT;, 8>(*j.5B"ݘ}z6('fdk.nψyʑl֖S\Z*έ|Ұ/]:6$ T2-6av筼:$cn1aĺTUlTef{Nl Qvh#WN xK_N!緅klގm-H/;tv4we^DF8smnx_7] R.2+}Lu{-TnXqrY1À"vx\)?xϙ\stm`'S{a: "+wRl*YEbADbzmG 8(WJu o4AݫҼ֟ZZLZ(fݩ|r=6+M^QNʤ䨋q9-ߜQ q*6xF+0˳h0F]-' ڹ+9sܖNٙKb0<_$~CQvUwF:I~uNn_yS*F~^pt:nx9L[y :{K"W/@&pl 7F2++[.i@/ RVW"՛wՌw~A)[.l|E\]] 5z7:A05Mb[UZԧ%{i|X%}f =TYlKCkkZU-~ȭ= ]lnYk1ix㿼~*Sz܈bX#>w;ώ_LCEnv#G*Y"nz_&NN,&LN=ME e@'btJciAm h_6=yĀD7K5'u a/2ķhkWWGk~Qr8ZzQi_A =TX.,]*(koPtQ CW8{w^Aņ lvREK $2ʴMѷ/14.U>r0 VDJk!mIP@&0C[-b<@]Rl7Lxsu&![=2; 2y瑸V#<5j A@Hta$ϗpԼ 0S|?~ i^Aq(&&[>wzYV@*!G7767xV mm6s e]Z>hg_4[ץpj+DPm|jqS] fj6Bg n(YIH|5 VU3&ҊS-oMv2h'1[t jRv}RЍ9wrٮGݮY$y%}~P&1&|1`fi^;K6AK4rѢv} |-cIP m.ǿCjI+U ߭^]c^,g3oco= {ֻbwbFs}SZC,IjL*`3LppPM_BJ={aIbʡĬFoTj855iBǿ63N(ިV IK < 6Z֙zt[^³q|-Hl~FZ貱l%.Z\ +XITKWM^=g Wǡ1y׉+(.{SKT1Ԟ<E%p6a=uur|B2EiA׋Š]Gb+yikT ΃$*T(g=8~ԓ3p& 2:aˌj^|*J c4fL>Eyݽ7}x]yuї1APT3/.8l0gGw1bp꜆!sՃ2 3XU4{/k^'"s8_=.q2hI*:1tPpf`n;"mw㸸T˩\ 0STED\'A[!oͨ6nՔZ'(ڦzJK[ʆ'I2oذsmEs-Ղ!/K O;a Kzw Vo)/}}H$  4'd ),! b "c!2un4:PN:˚5٤|)<{T$6חJd<ϰSv0tRq2W%uhO8鵚"q11_ʌU xZе+]^ ~~"QtåJfg|~}{$Ew5zC@/}zxv5f/jC_P{`xeʔZ FI=0w{ DImB8 Wsywn֋k0PoFU.%ǠcFWhY k'wAǩj^CX 46jc@jqTBjսӇYsZſ(6V44!J!dG eUbMq|jY&7 DszmmJΏ3ܼ|*_ZUQPDoXC;jW^K_⢢eߍܫ`URיY⦢*PvG? j5+1q4
      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1