This is the time and place to acknowledge.
I am not from Boston. I acknowledge that that might engender, the question: how could someone from somewhere else (a New Yorker, no less) do justice to editing a book about Boston? That would be akin to a man from Medford becoming mayor of New York.
Ever since taking three trips to Ireland, when I was a kid, I have been in love with virtually everything to do with it—the place, the people, the sensibility, the green, all of it. I started harboring a dream of becoming the first Jewish quarterback at Notre Dame. And the seeds were planted to become whatever the equivalent of a Francophile would be for all things Irish, Celtic . . . And very early, it struck me that Massachusetts was America’s Ireland. Or better yet, as Madeleine Blais puts it in her piece, that Boston is “Dublin West.”
I took my first trip to Boston, a school class trip, when I was fifteen. It was a short trip, but something stuck, and it was like an open-faced grilled cheese sandwich, pushed together and pulled apart, and though I left no mark on Boston, part of it was from then on inextricably part of me.
That was 1979. The same year that Larry Bird came to Boston. Starting then, and to this day, some of my oldest and closest friends call me Bird—nothing to do with my having a big beak, and everything to do with my all-time favorite player. That was also the year that Mike Milbury and friends famously climbed the glass at Madison Square Garden. I was there that night. Wearing a Terry O’Reilly jersey.
Born and bred in Manhattan, I went to college in New England, and felt something change, a good kind of undertow pulling, a sense that while my virtual DNA is in New York, along with family, friends, forever Proustian experiences, and so much else, I was more of a New Englander at heart, at core.
Never was that more deeply felt, more intensified, more crystallized than on April 15, 2013. Growing up, I’d never heard of Patriots’ Day, embarrassingly provincial as I was. Starting in freshman year at Brown, though, I saw it on the local calendar, and once it arrived, and I experienced it, even at a slight remove in Providence (Boston’s little cousin?), I remember well the mischievous pleasure and freedom of not just not going to class, but of watching the Red Sox play not just a weekday day game, but a morning game. And then the marathon. The glory, festivity, celebration of it all.
Ever since the bombings, I’ve felt a kind of inner Bostonian unleashed. And now, as never before, I feel connected with all things Boston-related, with the zealotry of a convert. From Hondo to Rondo, Kennedy to Kerry, Dunkin’ Donuts to Make Way for Ducklings, jimmies to the Jimmy Fund.
Boston has given so much to so many. On the most intimate level, it has given me the Solomons—Richard and Ann, John and Jimmy, all of whom were born in Boston—who are family to me.
Three days after the bombings, when the initial shock began to abate a little, I asked myself, What can I do? How can I possibly help? One thing I wanted to try to do was put together this book and give anything that might come from it to what would become the One Fund, to benefit the victims and their families. I wanted it to be an homage to Boston, a loving tribute to all things Boston, a book for Boston and Bostonians and beyond, a book about what makes Boston the special, endearing, and enduring place that it is. What makes Boston Boston.
All of those wants would have been for naught had it not been for the Boston-based Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and the writers whose work appears in this book.
When I sent Bruce Nichols, the publisher at Houghton, the germ of the idea for this book, he responded immediately, viscerally, perfectly, and galvanized support—complete and unconditional—from everyone at the house, Gary Gentel, president of trade publishing, on down, instilling a spirit the likes of which I have never seen from any publisher for any book.
In a digital culture, book publishing continues to move, for the most part, at a glacial pace. All the more astonishing, then, that Houghton was able to do everything it did to make the vision for the book a reality and to publish it six months to the day after Patriots’ Day.
I’m indebted to Tim Mudie, who was a fantastic in-house editor for this book and did everything masterfully. Michelle Bonanno is simply the best publicist with whom I have worked, and I feel very lucky to have her championing this book. All the considerable credit for the book’s cover design goes to Mark Robinson. Also at Houghton, my sincere gratitude to Brian Arundel, Laura Brady, Laurie Brown, Ken Carpenter, Larry Cooper, David Eber, Lori Glazer, Carla Gray, Andrea Schulz, and Michaela Sullivan.
The book was, by definition, a labor of love for everyone, and for nobody more than the writers presented here. They worked magnificently, passionately, selflessly, inspirationally. When the pieces began to come in, on deadline, one on top of the other, it felt like witnessing gold coins cascading out of a slot machine on that rarest of occasions when one hits the jackpot.
If only I could adequately express my awe, admiration, and appreciation for what these writers did. But it’s otherwise ineffable. Together, their work embodies the title of E. B. White’s “Boston Is Like No Other Place in the World, Only More So.” It testifies to their devotion to Boston that so many did what they did in such a short time. They gave much and received nothing in return. Ages ago, I first learned the word “altruism” in a book written by the great Robert Coles, a Bostonian himself. The contributors here are altruism personified.
My gratitude to those who helped facilitate and make some of the contributions to the book possible, including the George Plimpton estate, the John Updike estate, Ethan Bassoff, Deborah Garrison, Bette Graber, Will Lippincott, Maria Massie, Derek Parsons, Ann Rittenberg, Lauren Rogoff, Mark Strand, and Richard Wilbur.
Special thanks to Elizabeth Kurtz, who is like my own personal GPS.
My admiration and appreciation to Phillip Lopate and David Ulin for their bar-setting books Writing New York and Literary Los Angeles, respectively.
Thanks for your assistance, in many forms, to Jaime Clarke and Mary Cotton, Renee Coale, Kyle Damon, Robin Desser, Darcy Frey, George Gibson, Ellyn Kusmin, Beth Laski, Daniel Menaker, Anton Mueller, Heidi Pitlor, Johnny Temple, Alec Wilkinson, and Ande Zellman.
Thank you to the Collegiate School for that class trip in ninth grade and beyond. Eternal gratitude to Mary Kelly, who took me on those seminal trips to Ireland, to her family there, and thanks to my mother for letting me take those trips. Thank you to my family and all my friends for your support.
To Boston’s first responders, you can never be thanked and praised enough. I salute you.
When it comes to Boston, even if I am not a native son, it has always felt very personal, and never more than this moment. I hope and plan to move to Boston, at long last, next year, and, to paraphrase James Taylor, in my mind, I’m already gone.
John F. Kennedy is never far from my thoughts, and in the past few months three things he said have strongly resonated:
Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
A rising tide lifts all boats.
Ich bin ein Berliner.
In the aftermath of the bombings, the brave struggles to heal, and the determination to move ever onward, and with reverence for President Kennedy, his strong words allow me to paraphrase Kennedy:
Ask not what your Boston can do for you; ask what you can do for your Boston.
A rising Boston lifts all Americans.
We are all Bostonians.
This is for you, Boston.
With love,
Bird