(Roughly) Daily

Emergency Compliment: “a steady supply of emergency compliments to be used at times of great insecurity.”

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As we feel better about ourselves, we might spare a thought– well actually, lots of thoughts– for Marcel Proust; he died on this date in 1922.  He spent the last three years of his life in ill health, confined to his cork-lined bedroom, struggling to finish his masterpiece, À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past). He died before he was able to complete his revision of the drafts and proofs of the final volumes, the last three of which were published posthumously and edited by his brother, Robert.  Still, Graham Greene called Proust the “greatest novelist of the 20th century,” and W. Somerset Maugham called the novel the “greatest fiction to date.”  Indeed.

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