“»So yes, Mann, Proust, and Joyce showed that the universal gesture was possible, though the nature of the gesture in their work remains deeply ambiguous. The books are crammed with real life, but they are also dream books, fantasies. They explore a range of ways of explaining the world and then retract them. They offer paths to freedom but are almost hermetically sealed; they speak for everyone, yet they are self-absorbed; they are new but also oddly archaic; they contain the whole of reality but are wholly devoted to art.« – Edwin Frank: Stranger than Fiction : Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel. - London : Fern Press, 2024. - Page 186” Thomas MannMarcel ProustJames Joyce Book:Stranger Than Fiction Source: Stranger Than Fiction