THANKS first to my collaborators. To Matt Weiland, editor, friend, and co-conspirator: thank you for believing there are books in my book-drunk head. To Joanna Neborsky: the moment I saw “A Partial Inventory of Gustave Flaubert’s Personal Effects” was the first time I could imagine what this book could look like, and the moment I saw Theodore Dreiser with his hot dogs I knew I was right. To Morgan Davies, wading through the stacks in Morningside Heights while I was doing the same in Seattle, whose marginal comments on the gems she found were as delightful as Miss Austen’s in her family copy of Goldsmith’s History of England. To India Cooper, ToC ’92, for close reading and Harper Lee fact-checking. To Jim Rutman, for when things get more complicated after this. To Sam MacLaughlin, for good humor and that little bit of Anne Carson when I needed it, and to everyone else at Norton.
THANKS to the institutions that, without knowing they were doing so, made this book possible. Most of all, to the Suzzallo and Allen Libraries at the University of Washington, where I burrowed in an earlier life and never expected I would again, for full, open stacks, generous alumni borrowing privileges, and the loveliest working space I could hope for. To the Seattle Public Library, for a superb, accessible collection and an equally lovely downtown reading room. (And to Peet’s in Fremont and Zoka in Tangletown, my other favorite offices.) To the hundreds and thousands of biographers and editors this book depended on, and whose meticulous labor I appreciate like never before. To Wikipedia, mocked and mistrusted and, by now, absolutely indispensable: almost never the end of my search, but more often than not the beginning. To search engines that make the world’s knowledge porous and available, and to the old-fashioned physical books that continue to make it readable.
AND thanks to all of my reading friends, many of whom I thought of when writing about the books I know you love. To Connie and Peter Nissley for making my first book-filled house, and to Elinor Nissley, once and future collaborator and calendar- and book-making inspiration. And to Laura, Henry, and Peter Silverstein, who stepped around my stacks of books (while making a few of their own), who thought that when I left my job that might mean they would see more of me, and whose excitement for this book, and for everything else we share, always increases my own.