Proust's Deadline

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Martine Gantrel of Smith College and Michel Raimond of the Sorbonne, whose inspiring teaching sparked in me long ago a deep and lasting interest in Proust. Peter Brooks, who directed my doctoral dissertation on Proust at Yale University, has remained a critical source of guidance ever since. Ora Avni, Susan Blood, and Ben Semple provided invaluable advice on an earlier version of this project. I am especially grateful to Lynne Huffer, who led me to envisage the theoretical framework of this book in new ways. A number of people and institutions have been of direct assistance in the completion of Proust’s Deadline. In the fall of 2002, a generous grant from the W. P. Jones Presidential Faculty Development Fund supported archival research at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. I am indebted to the University of Illinois Press, and especially to its director, Willis Regier. His dedication, enthusiasm, and sense of humor have made the final stages of book production a delight. Armine Kotin Mortimer gave the entire manuscript a careful reading and offered excellent suggestions for revision. James Austin, Sam Bloom, and Sharon Johnson have taken the time to read key sections of the manuscript along the way. Colleagues Gerd Bayer, Georgia Cowart, Beate Diehl, Kurt Koenigsberger, Yuxiu Liang, and Bill Siebenschuh have been extremely helpful as readers and as sources of encouragement. My grandmother, Solveig Pederson, and my parents, Janice K. and 000 Cano FMT (i-xiv) 7/25/06 5:01 PM Page ix Narciso P. Cano, deserve special recognition for their loving support throughout the writing process. Finally, Janice H. Kaufman’s generous loan of her house and office in Oneonta, New York, in the summer of 2004, allowed me to finish the book in the peace of the Catskills. At Case Western Reserve University, it has been my good fortune to have Alan Rocke as a mentor and Mary E. Davis as a friend and interlocutor. I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to both for seeing me through this project from start to finish. Part of the fourth chapter of Proust’s Deadline appeared, in a somewhat different form, as “Death as Editor,” in Proust in Perspective : Visions and Revisions, ed. Katherine Kolb and Armine Kotin Mortimer (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 45–56. I thank the Press for allowing me to reprint the material here. This book is dedicated to the memory of Anthony R. Pugh, devoted Proust scholar and extraordinary friend. x Acknowledgments 000 Cano FMT (i-xiv) 7/25/06 5:01 PM Page x ...