Though whole monographs have been committed to identifying individual writers as important sources for Marcel Proust—including Henry James and Henri Bergson—none, Sachs argues, have done justice to the influence of William James. Her book rectifies this oversight by providing a thoroughly researched, exhaustively detailed account of the many correspondences between James’s writings and Proust’s novels. Sachs illuminates how Proust’s aestheticized ... Read moredepictions of mental life echo James’s scientific discoveries, leaving larger Jamesian concerns mostly in the shadows. Accordingly, the book will appeal primarily to scholars of Proust, and secondarily to scholars of James or early psychology.
William James Studies
Marilyn M. Sachs's Marcel Proust in the Light of William James: In Search of a Lost Source is an original and important contribution to Proust studies. Well researched and written in a lucid and engaging style, her book offers the reader an excellent literary and philosophical study of these two major figures while underscoring the many parallels between James's pioneering work in psychology and Proust's innovations as a novelist.
William C. Carter, Distinguished Professor of French, University of Alabama at Birmingham Show Less