Day One in The Cork-lined Room By Dennis Abrams, Publishing Prepectives Today we begin our one-year journey through the entirety of Marcel Proust's 20th-century masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, which will be taking place on our companion website, The Cork-lined Room. We anticipate that at a pace of 10 to 15 pages per day, excepting weekends, we should be finished in a year. The first posting about the text of the first volume, Swann's Way, will be online tomorrow. But the conversation has already begun and articles have covered: The top ten reasons to read Proust: #1 Reading In Search of Lost Time means that at last you'll be reading the greatest novel ever written. Virginia Woolf said, "My greatest adventure was undoubtedly Proust. What is there left to write after that?" Who are you to argue with Virginia Woolf? (read on ...)

Bonus Material: Proust's Paintings By Dennis Abrams Marcel Proust, in a letter to Jean Cocteau, proclaimed that "My book is a painting." And indeed, anyone who has read or has even attempted to read In Search of Lost Time has most likely found themselves overwhelmed, fascinated and even intrigued by Proust's countless references to artists and their paintings. Characters and landscapes are described in comparison to paintings. Characters within the text describe other characters in terms of classic paintings. (On one occasion for example, Monsieur Swann describes Odette as having "a face worthy to figure in Botticelli's 'Life of Moses.') Given that, can one understand the book without understanding or visualizing the art within the text? (read on ...)