SOURCE: Schenk, Leslie. Review of How Proust Can Change Your Life, by Alain de Botton. World Literature Today 72, no. 4 (autumn 1998): 844-45.

In the following mixed assessment, Schenk explores stylistic aspects of How Proust Can Change Your Life.

You would imagine that any author clever enough to think up such a sure-fire title [How Proust Can Change Your Life], destined to make it a best seller in belletristic circles, could do no wrong. Well, he could and did, and so did I, for I bought a copy sight-unseen—that is, without opening the covers, and I suspect myriad Proustians the world over will be doing the same. It has been a long time since George Painter's superb biography came out, and we Proustians cannot get enough of what is now almost universally acclaimed as the greatest novel of the century, Remembrance of Things Past, the only possible contender being...