Roth’s overall awareness of French literature and early attempts to understand Proust. How he soon borrowed from Proust for his own writing and then realized a similar aesthetic goal: to make visible the details of daily life. How Roth did this using Proust’s techniques for rendering the social manners, behavior, and even eccentricities not of Parisian life but Jewish life in Newark, NJ. The importance of narrative play and structure for Roth drawn from Proust. The significance of place for both novelists, supported by a concentration on detail and the anticipation of maternal and sexual love. Textual inclusion of Proust in Roth’s fiction.