"Marcel Proust and Andre Gide precipitated the French defeat to Germany in 1940 - this according to a press campaign organized by Marshal Petain's puppet government at Vichy. Proust and Gide clearly defined French literature in the first part of the twentieth century, and they were singled out by Vichy from among all other French writers.".

"Proust's career first intersected directly with Gide's in 1912 at a time when Gide had already published some of his best work and when Proust's best work was still to come. The well known rejection in that year of Proust's manuscript of Du cote de chez Swann by Gide's publishing house, the Nouvelle Revue Francaise, and Gide's part in that rejection marked the start of a professional relationship that was often conflicted and frustrating for both of them.".

"The first met most likely in 1891. Both rather quickly emerged from Mallarme's symbolist school of esthetics and developed their own often strikingly different conceptions of the purpose and function of art. They lived through the Dreyfus Affair and World War I. Their careers helped define the central intellectual issues in France in the 1890s and the first quarter of the twentieth century.

They both knew Oscar Wilde, and Wilde's influence and example helped pave the way for the different stances they took in their writing, and in their lives, toward the issue of homosexuality. That issue simultaneously drew them together and pulled them apart. The strategies they adopted for dealing with it were radically different and in the end defined to a large extend the thrust of their work and the way they chose to represent themselves in it.".

"Looking at Proust and Gide simultaneously, looking at Proust and the whole coterie of writers and critics that gathered around Gide at the NRF, provides a new context in which to assess both Proust and Gide. It forces consideration in a more incisive way of the key issues in both their careers: the Dreyfus Affair, World War I, homosexuality, and their art."--BOOK JACKET.