Word: proust
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...walls an impalpable iridescence, supernatural phenomena of many colours, in which legends were depicted, as on a shifting and transitory window." The lantern is still there. So is the scrubby garden behind the house, with the little door whose tinkling gate bell announced visitors-and signaled that the young Proust was to be sent up to his bedroom to be kept out of the way. For the dedicated Proustian, the bell evokes the author's agony...
...minute walk from "Tante Léonie's" across the Loir River (not to be confused with the Loire) takes the pilgrim to the Pré Catalan. The five-acre garden was created by Proust's uncle, a cloth merchant in Illiers, as a replica of the area in Paris' Bois du Bologne that bears the same name. The little lagoons, intricate patterns of shade trees, and the tiny lane lined with hawthorns (whose pink blossoms reminded Proust of his favorite dish, strawberries crushed in cream cheese) became Swann's park, and it is there that...
...General of National Education, Larcher has devoted the past 30 years to reminding the town of its Proustian heritage. Through his efforts, the Tante Léonie house was made a national monument and the Pré Catalan was preserved. He founded the Society of the Friends of Marcel Proust and the Friends of Combray. His monograph, The Essence of Combray, has been revised and reissued just in time to be snapped up by this year's hordes of cultists. He gives hours-long lectures in the converted carriage house that is attached to the Tante Léonie...
...establish that IIliers was Combray," remarks Larcher with a sly grin. "That wasn't easy. When I first came here and people discovered what I was trying to do, they wanted to shoot me." Even today, the town does relatively little to exploit the commercial possibilities of Proust's name, apart from the Benoist patisserie with its madeleines. Actually, according to Larcher, Marcel's madeleines came from another bakery, located a scant three doors from Tante Léonie's garden gate. "But," he sighs, "the owner doesn't care about Proust...
...tall gray-haired man of distinguished appearance was browsing in a paperback bookstore. Balzac, Eliot, James, Kafka, Proust-all at once his eye lighted on a muscle-plated male glaring out of a black background. The slash, in big red letters, read...