My steady feelings of thanks, which start with my children and my family and include a splendid range of cherished friends, are not reducible to a list. Elsewhere on these pages I name the five extraordinary editors of The New Yorker it’s been my privilege to write for and work for, but I must make special mention of Tina Brown, who was so insistent that I write more about myself, and David Remnick, whose patience and generosity toward me have been exceeded only by his love and support in hard times. I send opinionated love to all my past colleagues in the New Yorker’s Fiction Department and to their brilliant incumbent successors Deborah Treisman, Cressida Leyshon, and Willing Davidson. I am grateful beyond measure to Ann Goldstein, Mark Singer, Pamela McCarthy, Dorothy Wickenden, Peter Canby, Ben McGrath, Betsy Morais, David Denby, Patrick Keogh, Rhonda Sherman, Bruce Diones, Eliza Grace Martin, Hannah Jocelyn, Lauren Porcaro, Amanda Urban, Bill Thomas, Rose Courteau, Angela Patrinos, Darlene Allen, and Ms. Moorman’s Cathedral School fifth-grade haiku writers.
Last and first thoughts, within this book and on every day, are for my dear wife Peggy.