Tag: William C. Carter

Look Within

In a sense, everything Proust wrote was a rehearsal for the Search, but the important point—made clear by his many anguished doubts about whether or not he was a novelist—is that until he found the…

Thank You, Biographers!

Biography is, of the various kinds of narrative writing, that which is most eagerly read, and most easily applied to the purposes of life.  –Samuel Johnson, The Idler, 84 in A Johnson Sampler, edited by…

Biographilia

I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful. For, not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world,…

A Mosaicist

  … Proust had never been able to finish any work of fiction because he lacked the story and point of view. He had at last found his structure, one that was to prove ideal…