SOURCE: Shattuck, Roger. “Proust's Own Sound.” In The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust, edited and translated by Joachim Neugroschel, pp. vii-xiv. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001.

In the following essay, Shattuck considers the central thematic concerns of the stories in Pleasures and Regrets and places the collection within the context of Proust's fictional oeuvre.

Homer still suits us just fine. We turn to him for larger-than-life tales of bravery in battle and for the adventures of a resourceful hero finding his way home again after years of war. Odysseus' exploits will stay with us because Homer gave them the sturdy shape of epic. The Odyssey has come to look like part of the landscape we live in.

We tend to neglect Homer's principal rival, Hesiod, another great collector of stories. In Works and Days, Hesiod wrote both poetically and practically about the seasonal round of work on...