MLR, 105.2, 2010 569 of philosophy, psychology, and aesthetics, togetherwith his emphasis on ethics, but it is also the product of theway inwhich he reveals his own distinctive personality. Thus, in his study ofMallarme he writes: l]e voudrais m'arreter longtemps aux images et a lamusique de Stephane Mallarme et a tout ce que l'emotion y recele d'exquis. Ce sont la comme de translucides verrieres qui illuminent son oeuvre en la colorant. On penetre par elles les secrets d'une Beaute qui parait mieux vivante sous leurs clartes de pierreries. Mais du point de vue aride ou je me suis place, ilme faut examiner surtout l'appareil architectural de cette oeuvre' (p. 222). This edition includes a photograph taken towards the end ofMockel's life, showing him gazing intently at some point far to the viewer's left: this somewhat ferocious image conveys the intellectual intensityof theman but not the charm and youthful dynamism of the studies reproduced in this beautifully presented publication. University of Adelaide Rosemary Lloyd The StrangeM. Proust. Ed. byAndre Benhaim. London: Legenda. 2009. 142 pp. ?45. ISBN 978-1-905981-97-7. This collective volume on Proust ends with a consideration ofwhere studies on the author should be heading. The editor has chosen Malcolm Bowie's contribution to serve as a conclusion, both in homage to the late critic (this is the last of Bowie's original essays to be published posthumously) and because Bowie's reflections, in linewith the editorial intention behind the volume, seek to restore strangeness to the text, to shake up readings, and jolt the reader out of a complacent acceptance of timeworn interpretations. Bowie begins his article with a quotation from Walter Benjamin's The Image ofProust: 'Proust's most accurate, most convincing insights fasten on their objects as insects fasten on leaves, blossoms, branches, betraying nothing of their existence until a leap, a beating ofwings, a vault, show the startled observer that some incalculable individual life has imperceptibly crept into an alien world' (p. 125). Might this, Bowie asks, contain a useful general principle for readers? A guideline on how to read the novel? 'Can itbe read in such a way that the leaps and wing-beats of the text, its insect-like movements, are preserved rather than overridden in the act of reading?' (p. 125). Bowie advocates amethod of close reading which avoids always looking at the same passages (although Bowie acknowledges that this iswhat he does inhis article). In analysing the strange inProust, the present volume does indeed open up new ground for Proust studies. In his introduction the editor, Andre Benhaim, links the importance of the question to that of the reception of Proust: 'Often "obvious" to its firstreaders, th[e] strangeness has been forgotten or occulted by public and institutional recognition' (p. 1). Benhaim points out that Proust was recognized firstabroad and, in calling for a reassessment of the process of canonization, sees it as fittingthat the collection of essays should arise out of an international conference held abroad (Princeton University). The choice of topics is appealingly broad, but articles remain at all times focused on the question of strangeness. David Ellison places Proust between Heidegger's 570 Reviews thrownness in theworld and Freud's uncanny. Anne Simon examines identity and the gap between familiar and unfamiliar images of the self.Eugene Nicole analyses the strange and tortuous ways inwhich the protagonist isdesignated. Joseph Brami offersa genetic explanation for the displacement of Jewishness in the text.Benhaim looks at the novelties of the Exposition Universelle, and in particular, with the anecdote of the Sinhalese man, the ethnographic exhibitions, raising the question of race more generally. Given their common interest inLeonardo da Vinci's Santa Anna Metterza, Raymonde Coudert examines Proustian and Freudian interpret ations of the triangular relationship ofmother, grandmother, and child. Christie McDonald explores the enigma of the self and argues that the quest for subject ive unity is built up through disjunctive memory. Michael Wood examines the oddities of time and necromancy in the debate between cinema and photography. Antoine Compagnon analyses the perversion of truth and justice in the text.Bowie argues that the structuring device of superimposition means...