Much did I rage when young,
Being by the world oppressed,
But now with flattering tongue
It speeds the parting guest.
—William Butler Yeats,
“Youth and Age”
We may glean wisdom from the worst fools, or what are writers for? A greater fool than even the present writer was communist dupe Maxim Gorky. In a speech to the Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, Gorky said, “The basic hero of our books should be labor; that is, man organized by the process of labor.”
If Gorki’s advice were followed, literature would be the plucking and gutting production line in a Perdue chicken processing plant, and readers would be up to their bifocals in feathers and gizzards. But when it comes to writing “Acknowledgments,” Gorky may have been on to something. The basic hero of this book is man organized by the process of labor in the form of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Morgan Entrekin is my friend, my editor, my publisher, and my Hercules. He goes forth daily to perform his labors. He snatches the Pulitzer Prize–winning golden apple authors of the Hesperides, catches the Erymanthian Boar of bad writing before it gets into print, braves the poisonous fumes of the nine-headed Hydra of book reviewing, captures the Cerberus hell-hound of the modern book buyer’s attention span, and otherwise cleanses the Augean stables of the publishing industry. Count him among the immortals.
Associate publisher Judy Hottensen, publicity director Deb Seager, and publicist Scott Manning are saintly Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar in the marketing of books. Never mind if this particular star they’re following is an ignis fatuus. In all other cases their gold, frankincense, and myrrh are delivered to the correct address.
Art director Charles Rue Woods works always in the heroic scale, as the cover of this tome attests. I salute his intrepid industry as he perched upon the rickety scaffold of my scribbling to give a Sistine Chapel ceiling to the privy I have constructed.
Associate editor Peter Blackstock is the Chevalier de Bayard, the knight sans peur et sans reproche of editing. Without Peter, there would have been no chivalry in the grubby battle to produce a book.
Copyeditor Don Kennison played brave Galileo during the tortures of the Inquisition to which I subjected spelling, punctuation, and the English language in general. Often I forced him to renounce his accurate contention that Earth’s prose style revolves around the sun of grammar and sense. But his courage never failed. He exited saying, “And yet it moves.”
Managing editor Amy Vreeland and production director Sue Cole have—what is more valiant?— managed and produced. No Penelope beset by suitors coped better than they with waiting for the long overdue Odysseus, in the form of corrected proofs, to come slay that horde of unwelcome swains known as deadlines.
And let us give medals and erect monuments to sales assistant Becca Putman, digital manager Michael Dudding, and social media manager Jessica Monahan. I confess, due to my e-senility, that I don’t know exactly what digital and social media managing are, so Michael and Jessica become my Unknown Soldiers, but here, as at Arlington, all the more honored for being so.
Lastly there are, among the paragons, eight muses rolled into one: my wife, Tina. She is Calliope, muse of epic poetry, for inspiration in attempting to make an epic of the Baby Boom’s comedy, and Thalia, muse of comedy, for inspiration in attempting the reverse. She is Clio, muse of history, listening to my old stories over and over without letting her head explode. She is song’s Euterpe, crooning when things went well, tragedy’s Melpomene, comforting when things didn’t, and love’s Erato always. She is Polyhymnia for her hymns of praise and prayers of criticism. And she is Terpsichore in her dance of attendance upon the children and the household cares while I was locked in a room for sixteen hours a day writing or, as it is properly called, staring out the window doing nothing.
This leaves one muse, Urania, whose domain is astronomy. That would be my old hunting dog, Millie, who has spent the past year in an armchair in my office, staunch ally in staring out the window doing nothing.