Proust: A biography

Both George Painter's and Andre Maurois's biographies were written too early to take advantage of the first reliable edition of Proust's correspondence, or of the manuscripts and corrected proofs which Suzy Mante-Proust sold to the Bibliotheque Nationale. Hayman argues that Painter was wrong to say Proust invented nothing, that "Remembrance of Things Past" is not, properly speaking, a fiction but a creative autobiography, and that Proust invented a lot, not only in his fictions but in his letters, which are full of distortions and exaggerations.