Many of the stories in this book I first told onstage for the Moth, the matchless story-telling group that has become such an essential part of my imaginative life, as it has become essential to New York life in general. I thank all of the men and, mostly, women of the Moth, and especially my friend and director Catherine Burns.
Some other stories in this book first appeared, often in very different form, in The New Yorker. My editors there, to whom I am forever grateful, included Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, David Remnick, Charles McGrath, Ann Goldstein, and Henry Finder. And all of the innumerable fact-checkers who were present to nudge and amend get my thanks, too. George Andreou at Knopf, my old stomping, or barking, grounds, turned these stories into a book. I thank him, yet again, for doing that.
There are too many friends and colleagues from the past and present to name, but I do want to nod, briskly and inadequately, to Alec Wilkinson and Louis Menand. It was Alec who was my first and favorite companion into the mysteries of a wild exactitude, and Luke Menand who, with Emily Abrahams, became the first to encourage me to explore this dubious territory of my life for a book—chiefly I suspect because they had heard the stories of lost pants and keys so often around the table that they wanted to see them permanently retired between covers, as one sends aging parents to Florida. I thank them both.
The Gopniks—Myrna, Irwin, Alison, Morgan, Hilary, Blake, and Melissa—are forever the front line of my consciousness. The Gopnik-Parkers—Luke and Olivia—are forever the front line of my conscience. Martha Parker finally got the dedication for what she has been, hour by hour, to my life; but she also gets my thanks for what she added, sentence by sentence, to this book.