書名：How Proust Can Change Your Life擁抱逝水年華

作者：Alain De Botton
齣版社名稱：Vintage
齣版時間：1998
語種：英文
ISBN：9780679779155
商品尺寸：13.2 x 1.5 x 20.3 cm
包裝：平裝
頁數：208
How Proust Can Change Your Life《擁抱逝水年華》是英國作傢阿蘭·德波頓著散文作品，是“德波頓作品係列”之一。主要講述作傢運用文學傳記的手法，通過對二十世紀法國大作傢馬塞爾?普魯斯特（Marcel Proust）及其煌煌巨著的迴顧，展示其重要作品《追憶逝水年華》的創作風格、獨特的寫作技巧，以及開創世界文壇小說新紀元的曆程，並給讀者描繪齣普魯斯特真實而又生動的大傢形象。

精彩書評：
“德波頓渾不費力，談笑之間即勝過布魯姆、丹比對經典名著的品評。”——《科剋斯書評》

“此書引人入勝，實屬多年未見有趣的文學批評之作。”——《每日電訊報》

“德波頓寫活瞭普魯斯特，讀德波頓的普魯斯特，是極愉快的經驗。”似乎又看作普魯斯特的傳記或準傳記。——《齣版人周刊》

德波頓“成功地嚮我們展示瞭普魯斯物小說的精義”——《紐約時報》

Review
“A self-help manual for the intelligent person... witty, funny, and tonic.”  — The New York Times Book Review
“Delightfully original.... As well as being criticism, biography, literary history and a reader’s guide to Proust’s masterpiece, How Proust Can Change Your Life is a self-help book in the deepest sense of the term.”  — The New York Times
“Curious, humorous, didactic and dazzling.... It contains more human interest and play of fancy than most fiction.”  — The New Yorker
How Proust Can Change Your Life《擁抱逝水年華》是“德波頓作品係列”之一。普魯斯特的煌煌巨著《追憶似水年華》是那種誰都覺得自己應該去讀但對大部分人來說又確屬望而生畏的書。但在德波頓的這本結閤瞭文學傳記和實用、勵誌手冊的書裏，作者以他嚴正詳實的專業學識為根基，用他的生花妙筆嚮我們娓娓道齣《追憶》的真正妙處，描繪齣普魯斯特真實而又生動的精神肖像；同時他又把聖典拉到人間，從巨著和大師身上尋覓到改變我們每個普通人榖世人生的妙招法門，指點我們如何珍惜時光、體驗人生的真諦、學會調整人生的輕生緩急。

Alain de Botton combines two unlikely genres—literary biography and self-help manual—in the hilarious and unexpectedly practical How Proust Can Change Your Life.
Who would have thought that Marcel Proust, one of the most important writers of our century, could provide us with such a rich source of insight into how best to live life? Proust understood that the essence and value of life was the sum of its everyday parts. As relevant today as they were at the turn of the century, Proust’s life and work are transformed here into a no-nonsense guide to, among other things, enjoying your vacation, reviving a relationship, achieving original and unclichéd articulation, being a good host, recognizing love, and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on a first date. It took de Botton to find the inspirational in Proust’s essays, letters and fiction and, perhaps even more surprising, to draw out a vivid and clarifying portrait of the master from between the lines of his work.
Here is Proust as we have never seen or read him before: witty, intelligent, pragmatic. He might well change your life.
阿蘭?德波頓，英國作傢，1969年齣生於瑞士蘇黎世，8歲就被送到倫敦上寄宿學校，四年後全傢人移居倫敦。他起初學的是法語，寫作以英語為主，同時通曉法、德、西班牙語。18歲入劍橋大學，正式學曆為劍橋大學曆史係畢業。對學校的課程他一點也不感興趣，好在學業比較寬鬆，有足夠的時間隨心所欲地博覽群書，自學成纔。整個大學期間他主要依靠大學圖書館和附近一傢書店，在那裏他父母給他開瞭一個賬戶，隨他自由買書（後來他買書之多令他父母後悔當初的慷慨）。

1991年，阿蘭?德波頓發錶處女作小說《愛情筆記》，對愛情進行瞭哲學式的探討。此後的《愛上浪漫》和《親吻與訴說》更是繼續著對愛情進行哲學探討。

1996年，完成《擁抱似水年華》；2000年，《哲學的慰藉》齣版，運用歐洲哲學的智慧醫治現代人的焦慮不安;之後的《旅行的藝術》以及《幸福的建築》又從哲學、美學和心理學的角度重新審視瞭人們對旅行、對建築的看法。

2011年，德波頓被選為英國皇傢文學院成員；2015年，齣版《新聞的騷動》。

Alain de Botton is the author of Essays in Love, The Romantic Movement, Kiss and Tell, How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy, The Art of Travel, Status Anxiety, The Architecture of Happiness, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, A Week at the Airport, Religion for Atheists, The News: A User’s Manual, and latest novel The Course of Love, among many others. Alain is a bestselling author in 30 countries. He lives in London, where he runs The School of Life and Living Architecture.

How To Love Life Today抓住現在

How To Read For Yourself讀書為己
How To Take Your Time優哉遊哉
How To Suffer Successfully直麵痛苦
How To Express Your Motion傳情達意
How To Be A Good Friend交友之道
How To Open Your Eyes心胸豁然
How To Be Happy In Love享受愛情
How To Put Books Down棄書不觀
Following is an excerpt from Chapter 8, "How to be Happy in Love":

Q: Did Proust have any relevant thoughts on dating? What should one talk about on a first date?
A: Advice is scant. A more fundamental doubt is whether one should accept dinner in the first place.
There is no doubt that a person’s charms are less frequently a cause of love than a remark such as: "No, this evening I shan’t be free."
If this response proves bewitching, it is because of the connection made...between appreciation and absence. Though a person may be filled with attributes, an incentive is nevertheless required to ensure that a seducer will focus wholeheartedly on these, an incentive which finds perfect form in a dinner rebuff.
Q: Was he against sex before marriage?
A: No, just before love. And not for any starchy reasons, simply because he felt it wasn’t a good idea to sleep together when encouraging someone to fall in love was a consideration.
Women who are to some extent resistant, whom one cannot possess at once, whom one does not even know at first whether one will ever possess, are the only interesting ones.
Q: Surely not?
A: Other women may of course be fascinating, the problem is that they risk not seeming so...
Q: Are there any secrets to long-lasting relationships?
A: Infidelity. Not the act itself, but the threat of it. For Proust, an injection of jealousy is the only thing capable of rescuing a relationship ruined by habit...The threat of losing their partner
may lead them to realize that they have not appreciated this person adequately...If someone threatens the relationship, they get jealous, wake up for a moment, have another kiss with the horny tusk, and get bored once more. Condensed into a male heterosexual version, the situation runs like this:
Afraid of losing her, we forget all the others. Sure of keeping her, we compare her with the those others whom at once we prefer to her.