The starting point for this entertaining and perceptive book is a famous supper party held in 1922 at the Majestic Hotel in Paris, on the opening night of the ballet Le Renard, attended by Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Picasso, Joyce and Proust - who arrived at 2.30 AM in white gloves and black tie. With his extensive knowledge of high society, low life and contemporary gossip, and his gay sensibility, Richard Davenport-Hines puts Proust in the context of the frantic Paris of the 1920's and gives a vivid account of his declining days, at the height of fame, wracked by disease and drugs, living by night, frantically struggling to finish his novel, ensconced in his dodgy and squalid apartment rue Hamelin with Céleste Albaret. Davenport Hines is eloquent on Proust's moral courage in publishing Sodome et Gomorre, with its frank account of homosexuality, and on his trepidation and equivocal attempts to protect his personal reputation. Davenport-Hines is also particularly good about the cast of characters revolving around Proust during this period. A valuable addition to the Proustian library.
