ADAGIA

About the Book

If there is a labyrinth and a sphere, Proust’s memory as the minatory, then this book is genius. A flight out of that space and time. Icarus here is returned: precise, violent, and passionate. Alive. Geoff Waite German Studies and Comparative Literature, Cornell University: Scott Hartstein’s Adagia is a novel in that it is not a novel. Therein lies its novelty. It is a kaleidoscope, whose reflections—in both senses—shimmer about a plot, to be sure, but a plot that plays second fiddle to the author’s impressive erudition and his digressions into cultural, literary, religious, philosophical, musical, linguistic byways of all kinds and dimensions. These beckon the often challenged reader to follow along, unsure where he is eventually being led by the author—the work’s real protagonist—and wondering through what lush landscapes he will be able to return. Adagia will impress and astound many readers, perplex some, even intimidate—infuriate?—others. But it will not leave many indifferent. Norm Shapiro Professor of Romance Languages and LIteratures, Wesleyan University Writer in residence Adams House Harvard University: The birth of a book is like the birth of a child—Joyce discovered this analogy when he composed the “Oxen of the Sun” episode of Ulysses. So did Proust as he toiled, spinning the huge amniotic web of his great Oeuvre. In a different key, Adagia makes us retrace similar steps: its tangled tale surveys the long history of the European novel while creating a music that echoes in us deeply and exhilaratingly. Jean-Michel Rabaté Vartan Gregorian Chair in the Humanities, University of Pennsylvannia Co-founder and senior curator of Slought foundation.

About the Author

Scott Hartstein is an independent scholar eternally seeking out and researching French and comparative literatures. His teaching achievements in these spheres and more rarified atmospheres are recognized in colleges and universities all around the United States. One of his main fields of vision focuses on Proust’s Recherche. For this and other works related by way of more than a distinctive type of honest emotion, he has been praised among his peers (no small fries!). Great books in particular, and works of Art in general, figure among figures you might describe as “larger than life,” yes, no small matter for this auto-didactically sound writer, one-in-the-same-with-a-difference as a devoted student who has checked out books from a great variety of libraries (most notably, those of Occidental, Stanford and L’Ecole normale supérieure). We all owe Hartstein a tribute--a sign, a token and a debt--a contribution doubling as one of singularly liberated, yes, liberating gratitude, for his particular largesse with virtually any and all, near and far (whether in the short and long term, in longitudinal studies or, more globally, in longitudes, meridians, medians and means with deeply broad latitudes the world over).