SOURCE: Epstein, Joseph. “Monsieur Proust's Masterwork.” The New Criterion 16, no. 8 (23 April 1998): 19-28.

In this essay, Epstein offers a survey of critical commentary on Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.

What do we come away with when we read not merely a masterpiece but a masterwork of literature? The distinction between the two, masterpiece and masterwork, I take to be in favor of the latter, for a masterwork is not necessarily perfect of its kind, as a masterpiece ought to be, but of a significance beyond the question of mere (some “mere”) perfection. Usually large, often sprawling, always the product of monstrous ambition, a masterwork is a key book, one that defines a historical era, or the culmination of a form, or a national literature, or Western thought itself. Robert Musil, in The Man Without Qualities, set out to produce a masterwork, but, despite his great brilliance, failed. Nothing short...