Lovers of Proust who happen to be historians will certainly benefit from a close reading of this book, but it would be difficult to recommend it to generalists who are not in the above category. This time is not a concept, or a connected series of points, or a fixed scale against which geological epochs or human life-spans can be measured. Bowie's analysis of morality in Proust is provocative, original, and persuasive. Bowie's analysis of the Proustian treatment of death is powerful and elegant, and could not be more beautifully stated. I shall cite a fairly lengthy passage, to show how beautifully Bowie can write.
Death is everywhere on display.
Everyone is enjoying a brief stay of execution to enable them to attend a last, lingering matin e , but the grave has already claimed them. The narrator, whose artistic project has by now acquired a sudden new impetus, has himself recently been brushed by a dark wing and does not know whether he will live to complete his task. The child the narrator once was hovers between sleep and waking, desiring darkness but recoiling from it too. Indeed, there is no context except the text, Proust's enormous novel itself, and it is cited randomly throughout Bowie's book. Never do we learn that the model for the narrator's mistress, the splendidly sensual Albertine, was Proust's chauffeur Alfred Agostinelli.