2004 EDITION
“ACKNOWLEDGMENTS other than performance are artless,” Marianne Moore wrote, and added, “besides running the risk of being incriminating rather than honoring.” Still, it is a joy to try to honor the many people whose hard work and thoughtfulness are in this book.
It has helped me immeasurably to have the commitment and insight of two wonderful readers: my editor, Ileene Smith, and my agent, Eric Simonoff. I have been thankful for the erudite and meticulous attention of Timothy Mennel and Veronica Windholz, the many crucial contributions of Dan Franklin, Robin Rolewicz, and Zachary Wagman, the illuminating work of Allison Merrill, Evan Stone, Holly Webber, and Judith Hancock, and the care and enthusiasm of everyone at Random House—Barbara Bachman, Benjamin Dreyer, Deborah Foley, Jynne Martin, and Stacy Rockwood.
This book owes a great deal to Richard Avedon, who so graciously offered his time and his photographs. I’d also like to thank the people in the Avedon studio—Bill Bachmann, Michael Wright, and particularly Daymion Mardel—for all their work. I am grateful to Norman Mailer for talking to me about the chapters in which he appears. And I have been lucky to have the eye of Bruce Kellner and his knowledge of Carl Van Vechten, Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston. Kind help came from many people working in archives, libraries, literary estates, publishing houses, photograph collections, and museums; they are specifically thanked in the permissions section at the end. Over the years, all of the people acknowledged here and many, many others offered insights or drew my attention to important facts. Those mistakes that remain are my own.
I have had dozens of occasions to be grateful to Wendy Lesser, who published the first of these essays in The Threepenny Review. Thankful acknowledgment is also made to McSweeney’s and to Double-Take Magazine, where earlier versions of two chapters appeared. Work on the project was supported by the Catherine Innes Ireland Radcliffe Traveling Fellowship and the New York Foundation for the Arts. The MacDowell Colony was extremely hospitable—my thanks to Michelle Aldredge and Blake Tewksbury. I have also very much appreciated the patience and support of my colleagues at Bang on a Can, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, and the Poetry Society of America.
A number of writers and editors made helpful and memorable suggestions during the years of research and writing. I am glad to have the chance to thank Dave Eggers, Saskia Hamilton, Verlyn Klinkenborg, Toby Lester, William Louis-Dreyfus, Ethan Nosowsky, Alice Quinn, and, most especially, Vijay Seshadri. For years I have been encouraged by Lawrence Weschler’s inspired generosity. And, last, this book would have been quite different without the fine judgment of Rachel Eisendrath.
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“Imprudence,” Moore said, “is not considerate and, inconsistently, I am tempted to say that I associate much of what is here, with friends.” Many of my ideas about friendship and art were formed in the generous and sustaining company of Kris Anderson, Suzanne Bocanegra, Matt Boyle, Sophie Degan, John Frazier, Tara Geer, Michael Gordon, Peter Helm, Laura Helton, Jessica Francis Kane, David Lang, Peter Parnell, Beth Schachter, Mike Sonnenschein, Julia Wolfe, and, from the beginning, Justin Richardson.
I am deeply grateful to my extended family, both to those who are living and working now and to those whom I remember in all their vitality. The company and conversation of my sister, Amy Cohen, have been an inspiration for this project and for me. Finally, this book was, in every way, supported and influenced by my parents, Hilary and Michael Cohen, to whom it is dedicated, with love and gratitude.
2024 EDITION
Many people have supported the continuing life of A Chance Meeting, and, twenty years on, it is a great pleasure to add to these acknowledgments. This new edition has been beautifully seen through by those at NYRB Classics. I am honored to be part of this series, and grateful, first and foremost, to the brilliant Edwin Frank. At the press, I so much appreciate the fine work of Sara Kramer, Alaina Taylor, Alex Andriesse, Nick During, Linda Hollick, and many others. Warm thanks also to Michael Steger and Janklow & Nesbit for their continued representation of this book.
A Chance Meeting is very much bound up with ideas of photography, and I thank the Edward Steichen Estate and the Carl Van Vechten Estate for their permission to use photographs. Richard Avedon was extremely generous with me when the first edition of this book was being edited for publication. He died about six months after it was published, and his generosity has so kindly been remembered and continued by his estate. I am glad to see his photographs here as he intended.
My thanks to those who have worked on the careful renderings of foreign editions. In England, to all at Jonathan Cape, to Kate Worden, and Chloe Johnson-Hill, and, with special gratitude, to the wonderful editor Dan Franklin. In China, to those at the New Star Press in Beijing and to the translator, Gao Wei. In Austria and Germany, to the editor Piet Meyer at Piet Meyer Verlag and to the very fine translator Michael Mundhenk, who caught a number of errors and infelicities that have been corrected in the present edition. In Italy, to long-standing supporters at Adelphi Edizioni: Matteo Codignola, Benedetta Senin, Giulia Arborio Mella, and the translator Stefano Manferlotti. I treasure the memory of a number of serious literary conversations with Adelphi’s guiding spirit, the late Roberto Calasso.
Looking back over the original acknowledgments, I want to thank again all the friends, family, colleagues, and editors who first helped bring this book into daylight. The labors of the original production were substantial and go on making the book what it is. I am enormously grateful for decades of support from Eric Simonoff, still my agent, and from Ileene Smith, the book’s original, deep, and insightful editor, and the editor of my subsequent books.
In considering A Chance Meeting again, I have been helped by colleagues at the University of Chicago and by dear friends, near and far. In particular, my heartfelt thanks to Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, and to Maya Jasanoff, for her books, her friendship, and her reading of this book, its afterword, and so much else.
It is one of my life’s good fortunes that I met Vijay Seshadri, at a dinner, after a reading, in the middle of September 2001, and that we began a conversation that has continued as a sustaining force in all the years since. I thank him for his introduction.
Finally, I am grateful to, and for, Matthew, Sylvia, and Tobias Boyle.
—R.C.