RIGHT, RIGHT. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. “WHAT do I care?” cries the poor scuffling soul who paid for the book. Or badgered the town librarian into ordering it; or may even have hijacked a light plane and flown over the metropolitan area towing a banner saying “BUY [for instance] ONE FELL SOUP, SO I CAN BORROW IT.” Imagine, going to the trouble of an aerial banner, that long, with italics.
And does this general reader ever get “acknowledged”? No, it is always the same old editors, wives, and (not in this case) foundations. And the reader is supposed to read this? There aren’t enough demands on his or her time? Hey, the reader could be out boating.
I would like, even so, to list a great many people who have made everything, except breathing under water, possible; but they would probably start fighting among themselves, as at a wedding reception. You know, you always want to assemble your polymorphous friends from all over. Then when you do manage to pull some of them together, they stand around wondering, “What are they doing here?”
I will say this: If it weren’t for Ann Lewis I would probably be an astrophysicist or some damned thing. Part of “Chickens” comes from a theme I wrote for her in the tenth grade.
And here, more or less chronologically, are the editorial folk who have enhanced, boosted, harbored, commissioned, or stood still for, on an actual hands-on or hands-off basis, the particular stuff in this book (just this book, otherwise I would have to mention … never mind):
Jack Spalding, Reese Cleghorn, Barbara LaFontaine, Pat Ryan, Ruth Rogin, Liz Darhansoff, Peter Davison, Dick Pollak, Geoffrey Norman, Lee Eisenberg, Roger Angell, Paul Kurt Ackermann, James Seay, Pauline Kael, Jon Swan, St. Nemeg del Wonkca, Gordon Lish, John Walsh, Kerry Slagle, Jon Carroll, Esther Newberg, Rob Fleder, Jim Morgan, Rust Hills, Bruce Weber, Bill Whitworth, Garrison Keillor, Tracy Young, Dominique Browning, Natalie Greenberg, Mike “Sey Hay” Brandon, and Peter Davison again. And Joan Ackermann-Blount, in a capacity that resists definition.
Could I quickly mention, also, Joel McCrea? I just thought he was a hell of an actor. And Julie Christie is the most attractive woman in the movies. There. I’ve said it.
Other key names abound in the text.