Sunday, April 19, 2015

Quote of the Day, Literary Smackdown Division

In his review of Jonathan Gottschall's The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch, in the April 19 Outlook section of the Washington Post, Carlos Lozada shares a delicious quote:

Gottschall recounts how Marcel Proust traded pistol shots with a book critic who had called him "a pretty little society boy who has managed to get himself pregnant with literature."

To me, the only thing more astonishing than that quote is the idea that Proust fought a duel with actual weapons! Sadly, however, Lozada doesn't give us any particulars; anyone out there happen to know?

1 comment:

Tim said...

Thanks for the post, Steve — with reference to the "Outlook" review, the Gottschall book, the Proust duel, and the delicious Lorrain quote. I try to shed some light on the duel, above.