Proust and Signs: The Complete Text
In the 1972 edition of this book, which makes up the first part of this title, Deleuze examines signs emitted by persons and events in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. In one interesting chapter, "The Secondary Role of Memory," Deleuze illustrates how voluntary memory interprets inaccurately the signs to be deciphered. The jealous lover, for example, cannot accurately decipher the deceptions of his beloved. The second part of Deleuze's book is an addition to the 1972 edition. Here, Deleuze demonstrates how Proust's book, because of the multiplication of signs, becomes a literary machine, really three literary machines: of partial objects or impulses, of resources, and of forced moments. According to Deleuze, Proust or the narrator is the "universal schizophrenic" whose signs weave a spider web by sending out threads to the paranoiac Charlus and the erotomaniac Albertine, all "marionettes of his own delirium" or "profiles of his own madness." This is not easy reading, but the book will prove to be very useful to literary critics or comparativists.DBob Ivey, Univ. of MemphisCopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.