Deathday: French Author Marcel Proust 1922

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past). It was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927.

As a young man, Proust was a dilettante and a social climber whose aspirations as a writer were hampered by his lack of discipline. His reputation from this period, as a snob and an amateur, contributed to his later troubles with getting Swann's Way, the first part of his large-scale novel, published in 1913.

Proust had a close relationship with his mother. To appease his father, who insisted that he pursue a career, Proust obtained a volunteer position at the Bibliothèque Mazarine in the summer of 1896. After exerting considerable effort, he obtained a sick leave that extended for several years until he was considered to have resigned. He never worked at his job, and he did not move from his parents' apartment until after both were dead.[3]

Proust, who some claim was homosexual,[5] was one of the first European novelists to mention homosexuality openly and at length in the parts of À la recherche du temps perdu which deal with Monsieur De Charlus. This character is in the novel for the same reason Monsieur Swann is present. Swann is a wealthy man who makes a fool of himself by socializing in public with a prostitute, and one of the many themes of the novel is the vanity and shallowness of the very wealthy persons with whom Proust associated during his early adulthood. Likewise, the wealthy de Charlus makes a fool of himself for his ostentatious (for that time period) display of homosexual mannerisms.

His life and family circle changed considerably between 1900 and 1905. In February 1903, Proust's brother Robert married and left the family home. His father died in November of the same year.[6] Finally, and most crushingly, Proust's beloved mother died in September 1905. She left him a considerable inheritance. His health throughout this period continued to deteriorate.

Proust spent the last three years of his life mostly confined to his cork-lined bedroom, sleeping during the day and working at night to complete his novel. He died of pneumonia and a pulmonary abscess in 1922. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.