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| James Joyce 1882-1941 |
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| Marcel Proust 1871-1922 |
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| Franz Kafka 1883-1924 |
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| Sigmund Freud 1856-1939 |
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| Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 |
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| Igor Stravinsky 1882-1971 |
Marcel Proust and James Joyce who with Kafka and Freud constitute the inescapable writers of the twentieth century, met once at Parisian dinner party attended also by Stravinsky and Picasso, in May 18, 1922, half a year before Proust’s death, and soon after the publication of Sodom and Gomorrah, Part Two and Ulysses. Joyce had read a few pages of Proust, and saw no special talent; Proust had never heard of Joyce. The aristocratic Stravinsky snubbed both, and Picasso admired the women present. Accounts of the conversation between Proust and Joyce vary: evidently Proust lamented his digestion, and Joyce his headaches. That is the only link I know between Proust and Joyce except for Samuel Beckett’s brief monograph Proust (1933), in which Joyce’s greatest disciple negotiates a separate peace with In Search of Lost Time. —Harold Bloom
