“Jacques Henri Lartigue and the Discovery of India”: a very different version was broadcast on Night Waves, BBC Radio 3, in 2004. Another version was published in Aperture.
“Robert Capa” was first published in the New Statesman, and, in the U.S., in Civilization.
“If I Die in a Combat Zone” was first published in Modern Painters.
“Ruth Orkin’s V-E Day” first appeared in the Observer.
“Richard Avedon” was published in Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946–2004,
edited by Michael Juul Holm (Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, 2007). It first appeared, in the U.S., in the Threepenny Review.
“Enrique Metinides” combines the foreword to Enrique Metinides, (Ridinghouse/ Photographers Gallery, London, 2003), and a piece first published in the Daily Telegraph.
“Joel Sternfeld’s Utopian Visions” was originally published in the Guardian.
“Alec Soth: Riverrun” was first published in the catalog Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2006 (Photographers’ Gallery, London, 2006). It first appeared in the U.S. in From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America, edited by Siri Engborg (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2010).
“Richard Misrach” was originally published in Esquire.
“William Gedney” was first published in What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney, edited by Margaret Sartor (Norton, New York, 2000).
“Michael Ackerman” was first published in ArtReview.
“Miroslav Tichý” was originally published in the Guardian.
A short version of “Saving Grace: Todd Hido” first appeared in OjodePez 13; the version reprinted here was published as the introduction to Motel Club (Nazraeli Press, Portland, 2010).
“Idris Khan” was originally published in the Guardian.
“Turner and Memory” was first published in Tate Etc.
“The American Sublime” was first published in Prospect.
“The Awakening of Stones: Rodin” was first published in Apropos: Rodin, with photographs by Jennifer Gough-Cooper (Thames and Hudson, London, 2006).
“Ecce Homo” was originally published in the Guardian.
“D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers” was first published as the introduction to the Modern Library edition (New York, 1999).
“F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Beautiful and Damned” was first published as the introduction to the Penguin Modern Classics edition (London, 2004).
“F. Scott Fitzgerald: Tender Is the Night” was first published in The American Scholar, Spring 2001.
“Pounding Print” was originally published in the Guardian.
“James Salter: The Hunters and Light Years” was originally posted on the Penguin.com Web site.
“Denis Johnson: Tree of Smoke” was originally published in the Guardian.
“Ian McEwan: Atonement” was originally published in the Guardian.
“Lorrie Moore: A Gate at the Stairs” first appeared in the Observer.
“Don DeLillo: Point Omega” was first published in the New York Times Book Review.
“The Goncourt Journals” was first published as a foreword to Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Pages from the Goncourt Journals (NYRB Classics, New York, 2007).
“Rebecca West: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon” was first published as the introduction to Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (Canongate, Edinburgh, 2006).
“John Cheever: The Journals” was first published as the introduction to John Cheever, The Journals (Vintage Classics, London, 2009).
“Ryszard Kapuściński’s African Life” was originally published in the Guardian.
A much shorter version of “W. G. Sebald, Bombing, and Thomas Bernhard” first appeared in L.A. Weekly. A longer version was published in Pretext 9, Spring/Summer 2004.
“The Moral Art of War” was originally published in the Guardian.
“My Favorite Things” was first published in Lives of the Great Songs, edited by Tim De Lisle (Pavilion, London, 1994).
“Def Leppard and the Anthropology of Supermodernity” was originally published in the Guardian.
“Editions of Contemporary Me” was first published in Horizons Touched: The Music of ECM, edited by Steve Lake and Paul Griffiths (Granta, London, 2007). It first appeared in the U.S. in the Threepenny Review.
Parts of “Is Jazz Dead?” were originally published in The Independent Magazine, the Observer, and the Guardian. This version first appeared, in Italian, in a magazine whose title now escapes me.
“Cherry Street” was originally published in the Guardian.
“Blues for Vincent” was first published in Give Me Shelter, compiled by Michael Rosen (The Bodley Head, London, 1991).
“Loving and Admiring: Camus’s Algeria” was originally published in Esquire. It first appeared in the U.S. in Open City.
“Oradour-sur-Glane” was originally published in Esquire.
“Parting Shots” was first published in New Statesman.
“The Wrong Stuff” was originally published in Esquire.
“Fabulous Clothes” was first published in Vogue.
“The 2004 Olympics” was originally published in the Guardian.
“Sex and Hotels” was originally posted on the Nerve.com Web site.
“What Will Survive of Us” was originally published in the Guardian. It first appeared in the U.S. in Conjunctions.
“The Airfix Generation” was originally published in Esquire.
“Comics in a Man’s Life” first appeared in the Observer. A longer version was published in Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers! edited by Sean Howe (Pantheon, New York, 2004).
“Violets of Pride” was originally published in the Guardian. It first appeared in the U.S. in the Seattle Review.
“On the Roof” was first published in Granta.
“Unpacking My Library” was first published in New Statesman.
“Reader’s Block” was originally published in the Guardian.
“My Life as a Gate-Crasher” was originally published in the Guardian. It first appeared in the U.S. in the Threepenny Review.
“Something Didn’t Happen” was first published in the Fire volume of Ox-Tales, edited by Mark Ellingham (Oxfam/Profile, London, 2009).
“Otherwise Known as the Human Condition” was published in slightly different form as “Inhabiting” in the anthology Restless Cities, edited by Matthew Beaumont and Gregory Dart (Verso, London, 2010).
“Of Course” was first published in the anthology Committed, edited by Chris Knutsen and David Kuhn (Bloomsbury, New York, 2005).
I am grateful to all the editors at the many magazines, journals, newspapers, radio stations, and publishing houses who first commissioned or published these pieces in the UK and the U.S. So, my thanks, in no particular order, to: Boyd Tonkin, Greg Williams, Rosie Boycott, Tim Hulse, Tim De Lisle, Roger Alton, John Mulholland, Robert Yates, William Skidelsky, Richard Gott, Claire Armitstead, Paul Laity, Lisa Allardice, Clare Margetson, Katharine Viner, Michael Rosen, Karen Wright, Margaret Sartor, Alex Webb, Kate Bush, Thomas Dane, John Lanchester, Simon Grant, Thomas Neurath, Aaron Schuman, Jonathan Shainin, David Goodhart, Simon Winder, Maria Teresa Boffo, Anne Fadiman, Natasha Wimmer, Tom Christie, Jon Cook, Katri Skala, Gregory Cowles, Edwin Frank, Liz Foley, Steve Lake, Paul Griffiths, Jo Craven, Alexandra Shulman, Susan Dominus, Liz Jobey, Mark Ellingham, Michael Juul Holm, Siri Engberg, Matthew Beaumont, Gregory Dart, Sean Howe, Chris Knutsen, David Kuhn, Wendy Lesser, Richard Beswick, Jamie Byng, and Francis Bickmore. My apologies to anyone who should have been included in this list but who has been accidentally omitted
For her help in turning these pieces into such a handsome book I am grateful to Katie Dublinski at Graywolf. I’m also grateful to Steve Woodward for arranging permissions for reproducing the photographs and paintings in the book (and to the photographers and institutions who made life easier for him and me).
Love and thanks, as always, to my wife, Rebecca Wilson.
My biggest debt is to Ethan Nosowsky. An old girlfriend once said to me: “All you do is sit in your room and seethe.” An exaggeration, obviously, but, yes, I did a fair bit of seething, mainly because my book about jazz, But Beautiful , had not been published in the U.S. My seething was brought to an end by Ethan, who was then an editor at FSG/North Point Press. (Actually, I have to thank Alexandra Pringle, once my UK editor, then my agent, now a publisher once more, for wrestling back the rights to But Beautiful and finding Ethan in the first place.) Ethan later arranged for me to be represented in the U.S. by Eric Simonoff, who has been a consistently wonderful friend and agent, first at Janklow & Nesbit, now at William Morris. Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying that this book is dedicated to Ethan with good reason, immense gratitude, and great affection. It was lovely being at his wedding to Cristina Mueller in New Orleans in 2009, even though it all ended rather badly when I accidentally dropped Rebecca’s laptop on the floor and it looked like she’d lost everything, which was her fault, really, because I’d been telling her for years about the importance of backing things up, but she wouldn’t listen.