Proust
Edmund White
Phoenix £6.99, pp149
Buy it at BOL

In the recent burst of Proustmania occasioned by Raul Ruiz's film of Time Regained, what better place for curious Proust virgins to begin than with Edmund White's succinct and lively biography?

White sets the novelist's life and work against the background of his times, sketching in any gaps in the reader's knowledge of late nineteenth-century French politics, offering a concise outline of the Dreyfus affair, in which Proust's loyalty to his Jewish mother came into sharp conflict with the sympathies of many of his Catholic conservative friends.

Proust's magpie-like relationship to Parisian society is neatly summed up in an anecdote told to White directly by the great-niece of Comte Henri Greffuhle, Proust's model for the Duc de Guermantes. When Proust died, the comte found his butler in tears and asked why he was grieving: '"Did you know Monsieur Proust?" "Oh yes," the butler replied. "Every time there would be a ball here, Monsieur Proust would come by the next day and quiz me about who had come, what they said and so on. Such a nice man - and he always left such a generous tip!" '

White's account of how Proust's writing was informed by his sexuality is serious and perceptive, though occasionally he indulges in speculations that carry a whiff of burning martyr: 'Perhaps because he was known to be gay (at least to an inner circle), his contemporaries couldn't imagine that such a popinjay could turn out to be the greatest novelist of the new century.'

One advantage of White's book is its brevity, not a word often associated with Proust; it provides an excellent introduction for anyone planning to plunge into the great work itself.