Beginning with the remarkable essay Contre Sainte-Beuve, this surprising and stimulating critical collection includes Proust on the contemporary writing of his era, on painting and painters, and on such literary masters of the nineteenth century as Tolstoy, Goethe, and Stendhal.

An instant classic in the literature of friendship: the witty, affectionate 40-year correspondence between a great story-writer and her New Yorker editor. . pleasure and delight.