title: Proust and Three Dialogues
author:  Samuel Beckett 
description: Samuel Beckett's celebrated early study of Marcel proust, whose theories of time were to play a large part in his own work, was written in 1931. It is a brilliant work of critical insight that also tells us much about its author's own thinking and preoccupations. In its own right it is a masterpiece of literary and philosophical creative writing. This edition was published in 1999 - ten years after the writer's death. The volume also contains the equally celebrated dialogues with the art critic Georges Duthuit - written to record their different points of view after the discussions took place. Beckett always let Duthuit win, but his very unusual and often opposite point of view on the nature and purpose of art is all the more forceful and memorable on that account.
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  iII
  
   **For my son Beckett,**
  
  **conceived in the hungers of love.**
  
  “Into love and out again, thus I went, and thus I go.”
  
  — D ORO T H Y PA R K E R
  
  Contents
  
  Epigraph.
  .............................................................................iii
  
  Preface: Food for Thought.....................................................
  .vii
  
  Part I: Getting Started
  
  1\. Doing Without to Eventually Have It All
  .................................... 3
  
  2\. The Science of the Detox
  ....................................................... 9
  
  3\. The Psychology of the Detox
  ................................................ 14
  
  4\. Learning How to Read Your Love Map ................................... 22
  
  Part II: The Couples’ Detox
  
  5\. Couples Preparing for the Detox
  ........................................... 27
  
  6\. The Couples’ Detox
  ............................................................. 29
  
  MODULE 1: STARTING UP (DAYS 1 TO 5) ....