It would have horrified the great aesthete himself, but a long lost proof of Proust's masterpiece Remembrance Of Times Past, which reveals how he laboured for years over what to call it, may fetch £1m.
The handwritten manuscript shows how he endlessly reworked the first part of his 13-volume meditation on the minutiae of life, and agonised ad nauseam over a title.
Had good reason not finally prevailed, the greatest French novel of the 20th century might have been called The Frazzled Pigeon, The Stalagmites Of The Past, What One Sees In The Patina, or even more bizarrely, Gardens In A Cup Of Tea.
Proust took to his bed to write after suddenly recalling a childhood memory as he dipped a madeleine biscuit into a cup of weak tea. Nearly two decades later he finished it, but was still torn between calling it Les Intermittences du Coeur or A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.
The draft now being sold by Christie's in Paris details how he reluctantly plumped for the latter.
Having been rejected by pretty well every publisher in Paris, Proust printed the book himself, paying extra for his constant revisions.
The chopped and changed manuscript on sale forms all but one page of Du Cote de Chez Swann (Swann's Way), the first volume of his magnum opus, which somehow became detached from the rest of the Proust papers after the death of his brother Robert in 1935.
The sale would be doubly abhorrent to Proust, according to the writer Alain de Botton. "He would be appalled by it.
"Proust loathed the idea of people thinking of the book as a memoir rather than a novel. He was also very sarcastic about collectors and the type of people who rushed out to get first editions. It was what was in a book that was important, rather than what it was worth."
De Botton, author of the bestselling How Proust Can Change Your Life, said that even after all his procrastinations, Proust still hated the name.
"He tried all sorts of variations, The Delayed Days, Visit Of The Past Which Dawdles, even In Front Of Some Stalagmites Of Some Days Gone By. After all that, Remembrance Of Times Past seems quite good actually."
Verene de Soultrait, Christie's French book specialist, said the proofs were "incomparably" important.
Proust (1871-1922) has recently undergone something of a mini-boom on both sides of the Channel as a result of an exhibition at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and the release of Raul Ruiz's film Time Regained, based on his final volume.
However, he is not the only French literary great to have enjoyed an unlikely revival.
The essays of the 16th century philosopher Montaigne popped into the top 10 of internet bookseller Amazon's bestseller list this week, after being featured on De Botton's TV series The Consolations of Philosophy.
"I don't think he has been on a bestseller list for 400 years," said De Botton.
