The first great work of autofiction?: In Search of Lost Time - The Prisoner

Started reading the most recent publication in the anticipated 7-volume Penguin Classics edition of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time - a much more accurate and accessible translation than the mid-20th-century work that we had to rely on - you can see how the title alone is a change and much closer to Proust's language than the previous "Remembrance of Things Past" (a phrase in a Shakespeare sonnet that not only did Proust not select but that also misrepresents in "Search": the experience is not one of "summoning up" memories but of being overcome by waves of memory - a point well made by my college mentor Richard Macksey). All that said, the 5th volume, The Prisoner, is not, so far (70 or so pp in, about 20 percent?), quite as clear and accessible as some of the previous books - found myself put several ??s in the margins as passages I couldn't decipher, though that could be me and not the translator, Carol Clark (she also includes some Britishisms and does not abide by the which/that conventions, oh well). The first section of The Prisoner is almost entirely devoted to the narrator's obsession w/ his partner, Albertine, who has moved in with him as that live in adjacent bedrooms in the family apartment as Clark notes in her fine intro., this would be highly unconventional and even scandalous in that era and class. The narrator is tortured by jealousy of Albertine and in particular disturbed by the possibility that she may be having sexual relations with her women friends. Of course we view and understand these jealousies today in light of what we know of Proust's homosexuality: Albertine is the placeholder for his male lover (a family chauffeur, I think) about whom Proust could not, or felt he could not, write directly - truly a shame that he could not have been more courageous, but today we can decode much of the novel. In essence, it's probably the first great work of what today we call "autofiction," the story of the writer's life as mediated by literary convention; oddly, al the names in the Search are changed, though pretty easily identified as Proust contemporaries or as composites (particularly the writers, artists and musicians). The single character who cops to his "nighest" name is Proust himself: In the first section of the Prisoner the narrator notes in passing that his name is Marcel, and I think that's the only moment of such candor in the entire series. Even as I quibble a bit about the first section of The Prisoner, there are always some startling and memorable passages and observations, and I know that there will be many more as the narrative shifts focus to a musical salon, where Proust can offer great insight and sensitivity.