Personal and cultural history was essential for both authors. For Proust it meant the collapse of the Belle Époque, for Roth, the altered sense of a politicized America. Also, Jewish concern over the status of anti-Semitism in the world of Proust continued in Roth but shadowed by the Holocaust. Attempts to preserve the past, whether personal or historical, and the failure to do so whether in France or America. The importance of WWI and WWII for the two novelists, in addition to parallels between the impact of the Dreyfus Affair for Proust and Vietnam for Roth. Conflict defined the work of both, for Proust between the declining aristocracy and the ascendant bourgeoise; for Roth, the status of Jews in an unwelcoming society. How dinners encapsulated the question of status.