Hyperbole Books · an imprint of SDSU Press
Los Angeles—A Proustian Fiction
Fanny Daubigny · Translated from the French by Bruce Whiteman
French literature / Film noir / Los Angeles
What happens when Marcel Proust enters the shadows of Los Angeles? Fanny Daubigny brings French literature into conversation with Hollywood noir, tracing memory, desire, and the mysteries of consciousness across the page and screen.
Translated by Bruce Whiteman, Proust in Black makes cultural criticism a literary encounter: Proust, Billy Wilder, and the cinematic city meet in an illustrated study of how we remember, imagine, and read the dark.
Full-color paperback
$23.95
Catalog retail
Buy this edition at AmazonDirect from SDSU Press
$17.95 + 99¢ shipping
ISBN-10: 1938537858
ISBN-13: 978-1938537851
Full-color paperback
$30.95
Catalog retail
Buy this edition at AmazonDirect from SDSU Press
$25.95 + 99¢ shipping
ISBN-10: 1938537815
ISBN-13: 978-1938537813
The special edition is printed on gloss archival paper. Both editions: Hyperbole Books / San Diego State University Press, 2019. Amazon pricing may vary.
In conversation · Aztec Paper · May 8, 2019
“Los Angeles has the texture of a dream-like reality. Never completely real, never completely fake.”
In this SDSU Press interview, conducted in February 2019, Daubigny describes the personal stakes of Proust in Black: her attachment to Los Angeles, her experience of migration, and her wish to bring poetry and feeling into literary criticism.
The conversation ranges from the city’s precarious geography and Cold War anxieties to changing screen detectives, Proust’s sleepless narrator, and the political questions woven through his fiction. It offers a particularly revealing entry into the book’s crossing of cultures and genres.
Read the full interview →Read the complete endorsements in the SDSU Press catalog →
Coburn follows the book through insomnia, dreaming, sexuality, and fear, examining how Daubigny places Proust alongside European and Los Angeles film noir. Her essay focuses on the uncertainty of truth and the detective story’s relationship to cultural change.
Writing from her own familiarity with Los Angeles film culture, Brosnan considers the book’s cinematic settings and its reading of In Search of Lost Time. She highlights the connection between memory, intimate experience, and the city’s atmosphere after dark.
Explore all Proust coverage on Aztec Paper →
