My wife and I moved to France in 1972 and fell in love with nineteenth century French literature. We read everything by Balzac, all of Zola and we worshipped Flaubert. But we could never understand the appeal of Marcel Proust. After just a few moments holding one of his heavy volumes and struggling through a dense and convoluted sentence which appeared to wander aimlessly and endlessly, I would finally put the book back on the shelf, mystified. Despite several attempts I never succeeded in getting past the first thirty or forty pages.

I was in my forties before I reached the section on Aunt Leonie, early in Swann's Way.  Aunt Leonie "never spoke save in low tones, because she believed there was something broken inside her head and floating loose there, which she might displace by talking too loud;" and suddenly I discovered that Proust was actually a very funny writer. After that I could not stop, and reading Proust became one of my major pleasures. Nonetheless, the pressures of jobs and family meant that I did not finish reading the final volume till thirteen years after I had started the first. To celebrate finishing the whole novel, my wife bought me a new translation and I started reading all over again from the beginning. Since then I have read the novel several times, and each time have discovered new and deeper pleasures.

A friend who learned that I was a Proustian, invited me to attend her monthly reading group when they selected Swann’s Way to read in February 2004. There was no plan to read beyond the first volume; they just wanted to see what Proust was ‘all about’. In the event, they enjoyed volume one so much they decided to make volume two their choice for February 2005. I am delighted to say that I will be joining them again, for the seventh time, in February, 2010 to discuss and celebrate the final volume: Time Regained.

One of the problems of leaving a gap of eleven months between readings is that the group members forget the names and identities of all the characters. This is further compounded in Proust’s novel because many of his characters are referred to with a variety of different names. The Duchesse de Guermantes for example is also referred to at various times as Mlle de Guermantes, Mme de Guermantes, Oriane, the Princesse des Laumes and Mme des Laumes. To help the reading group keep track, I therefore created a list of the major characters with a brief thumbnail sketch of their relationships. This quickly evolved into a ‘Who’s Who in Proust’ guide. At the same time, after eleven months and eleven other books, the reading group understandably had trouble remembering ‘the story thus far’ and so, to amuse myself as much as to assist the group, I wrote a synopsis of the volumes we had already read. Once I had started, I was unable to stop until I had completed the synopsis of all seven volumes.

The members of the reading group are all intelligent and educated, professional women but, from the questions they asked me, I noticed there were some gaps in their knowledge. They wanted information on the Belle Époque and the Dreyfus Affair and they were uncertain about several events in French history. Based on the questions I had been asked, I therefore wrote a few essays on the background information a modern reader needs in order to better enjoy and appreciate Proust.

Within a couple of years I had created a manuscript which I entitled ‘Proust for Everybody: Everything you wanted to know about Proust but never dared ask.” I then tried to find a publisher but nobody was interested. Nobody would even read it; so the manuscript just sat in a drawer, to be taken out once a year for the February Book Group meeting.

Then somebody suggested self-publishing.

Slightly nervous and apprehensive I decided to just publish the ‘Who’s Who’ section of my work as I could see that was the most useful and potentially valuable section and within a few weeks I was able to proudly show my friends ‘Who’s Who in Proust’ by Patrick Alexander. It was a skinny little thing, more like a pamphlet, but it was a book nonetheless. I then realized I should have published the whole manuscript rather than split it into sections and so I sent the complete manuscript, with maps and more ambitious cover-art, to a self-publishing house which is part of Amazon, and again I was delighted with the result.

My original goal was just to produce a book for the reading group and which I could show friends in order to explain my strange obsession. If I ever got my investment back I would have been more than satisfied. In the event I quadrupled my investment many times over.

All my sales are done online through Amazon and marketing is simple word of mouth. I do nothing. Somebody showed my book to a literature professor at Yale and he has now made it a required text. My brother, a history professor at London University, showed it to a Proustian colleague who is also thinking of making it a required text. Another friend showed it to an editor at Random House who then decided to purchase the rights.

I have worked with an editor at Vintage Books for the past 12 months and we have made considerable additions and improvements to my original text. I am delighted with the professionalism that Vintage Books has brought to my modest labor of love. The beautifully designed and illustrated book which is due for release in September 2009 is something of which I am immensely proud and is a true expression of the admiration which I feel for this most sensitive, subtle and comic of writers.