Tingle Alley is inaugurating a new category, Little Thoughts Flitting, thus named in honor of the candle moths that plague our establishment’s kitchen. Like the moths, posts falling in this category will be inconsequential, not necessarily seasonal, and, when smooshed with paper towel, will leave behind not much more than a black smudge and a tiny wreckage of wings. Further, they will reflect that the proprietrix of this site is a) basically a shut-in and b) easily amused. They will be hastily written and are pinned here solely to get them out of my head.
I’m always interested in reading the Acknowledgments page of books — it’s a little like reading someone else’s yearbook, except instead of seeing how popular they are you get to judge how well-connected. For example, “thanks to Robert Gottlieb for the encouraging drinks and for keeping me from the razors that night at Plimpton’s” points to firmer entrenchment in the literary establishment than “thanks to Robert Gylefarb for retrieving Chapter 3 when my computer crashed.” Just as an inside joke about a kegger from someone on Homecoming Court would indicate more popularity on the high-school level than “Have a good summer! Keep balancing those equations!” from a Chem Lab partner.
So I notice in the acknowledgments to the anthology Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times that Nicholson Baker is one of about sixteen or so individuals that editor Kevin Smokler thanks in the acknowledgments. Now Mr. Smokler’s intention was probably to thank a literary colleague for a good turn, not to say, “Hey, I know Nicholson Baker!” but regardless, the frivolous reader will fasten onto the name and think, “Kevin Smokler knows Nicholson Baker,” with the largely unconscious but potent addenda thought, “That Smokler guy must be intelligent, indeed.”
Being a frivolous author in addition to a frivolous reader, this of course makes me worry about my own book and who I can thank in the acknowledgments who has a marquee-level name the inclusion of which would add immediate intellectual heft and gravitas to my project. (The best I’ve come up with so far is “Thanks to Laura Lippman for occasionally reading my blog,” but suspect that this doesn’t hint at the right level of intimacy.) However it seems creepy to strike up acquaintance with someone just so that I can later thank them in my acknowledgments. Which is when it struck me, who is to say whether someone thanked in the acknowledgments actually knows that author or not? It’s not as if there were some legal forum where acknowledgees can rebut their presence in the acknowledgments (“I do not know that man, Mr. Smokler. Nor did I ever aid or encourage him in any way whatsoever in the creation of the anthology Bookmark Now” — Plaintiff N. Baker.) So what’s to keep me from salting my acknowledgments with whatever names I so choose? Currently here’s what I’m working with as a draft: “Thanks to the Frye parents; Josh Jacobs; Vladimir Nabokov; my beautiful book club; Great Smokies Writers Program; Nan Talese; Mr. Tingle; and James Wood.” I’m also thinking about including Chip Delany and Zoe Heller, just for the hell of it.
Related: Please see the Rake’s thoughts on Bookmark Now.
You remind me of one of my all-time fave Loudon Wainwright songs: The Grammy Song (c. 1981):
Last night I dreamed I won a Grammy
It was presented to me by Debbie Harry
I ran up on stage in my tux
I gulped and I said “Aw Shucks.
I’d like to thank my producer…and Jesus Christ.”
Comment by Jimmy Beck — 6/9/2005 @ 12:55 pm
I love checking out acknowledgments and dedications! I’m always grumpy with writers who don’t thank anyone.
Extra points when you spot the same name on the back blurbing the book and inside being acknowledged. We live in a small and incestous world.
There’s one sf author who’s, let’s say, tempermental and is forever changing the dedicatee of a book as it goes through different editions. If you can get your hands on all different editions of a particular books you can trace the paths of this writer’s friendships with some dedicatees being dropped and then reinstated and then dropped again. Fabulous.
Absolutely, you don’t have to know a person to acknowledge them. I’m going to start putting Georgette Heyer in my acks, she’s probably the biggest influence on my writing. Her or Enid Blyton.
Comment by Justine Larbalestier — 6/9/2005 @ 1:43 pm
Justine, I was really happy when one of the blurbs on the UK edition of my novel named Georgette Heyer–she’s alluded to in the novel (which is completely un-Heyer like in its vibe) as well, her books are really unbeatable of their kind… I am sort of ashamed of my acknowledgments for HEREDITY. Basically it took me 10 years to write that novel (if you count from when I first started researching to when it was actually published–real writing time more like 4 years, which still sounds discouragingly slow). So my acknowledgments are ridiculously long, especially because I was SHAMEFULLY ready to approach any writer I met and ask them to read my manuscript. I am really mortified in retrospect–because I was at a fancy grad school doing my PhD, it meant I came across a lot of ridiculously well-known writers and pestered them. I was young and foolish and they were all really kind and didn’t tell me to buzz off! Believe me, I am not boasting, just confessing my shamefully forward requests to (among others, God this is embarrassing) J. M. Coetzee, John Hollander, Caryl Phillips and Joyce Carol Oates! How awful of me… I must say that Joyce Carol Oates in particular gave me great encouragement at a low point when I had despaired of ever getting the damn thing published, but the others were really good too. As a result I now read pretty much anything anyone asks me to, out of shame and retrospective gratitude. CAAF, you definitely must include James W. in yours!
Comment by Jenny D — 6/9/2005 @ 3:02 pm
I read acknowledgments all the time, and for the same reason: somehow, some way my mind tells me that the mentioning of certain names will legitimize a book, which, of course, isn’t logical, but I do it anyway. (When I was a wayward academic, I always checked the acknowledgments in scholarly books to make sure the “big names” were there; and, if they weren’t, I’d unfairly assume that perhaps the book in hand wasn’t as good as it could be.) As far as knowing the person acknowledged, I don’t know if that’s necessary. If and when I published a book, I just might make a nod to John Milton, even though he’s been dead for 330 years.
Comment by Michael — 6/9/2005 @ 3:22 pm
Jenny, I do need to read Heredity — I can’t wait to! And I’ve heard awfully nice things about JCO and glad that she came to the rescue at a low time; she seems genuinely interested in being a mentor, which is big of her considering her own hypergraphic schedule. (p.s. I’ve replied sort of to your comment also in the post above, responding to Justine, vis a vis the lengthy time to produce a novel and the ensuing increase in one’s acknowledgments. Sorry about that vis a vis by the way; yuck.) I want to hear more about the Coetzee – and sometime when I’m in Manhattan I’ll tell you my funny Caz Phillips story, which isn’t really that funny but may seem so after one or two drinks.
Michael, speaking of scholarly books, I’m reading one quasi-scholarly volume now, and as a friend pointed out who was looking at it, it’s odd as the author thanks Iain Pears (Instance of the Fingerpost) in the acknowledgments. I don’t know why we found this amusing/interesting; perhaps just as a non sequiter… I hope they never compare sales totals. It would be dismaying for a scholar, I imagine.
Comment by CAAF — 6/10/2005 @ 12:13 am
p.s. I meant to say, Justine, that I remember reading an article recently that tracked the dedicatees of a certain novel. Or maybe an author was himself fessing up to swapping names over editions … but I can’t remember where.
Comment by CAAF — 6/10/2005 @ 12:15 am
I’m a sucker for writing Acks, even though I’ve been burned in cases where by the time the book is pubbed the relationships have soured or, ahem, the agent has been fired (twice). But I go on being Pollyanna, a kitchen-sink Ack-er who will go on thanking nearly everyone in Warner Bros style until the hook yanks me off the stage. That said, I’ve consciously in the past avoided Ack-ing the more famous people I know – although I do plan on dedicating a book to one of them at one point – because I figured I might not be doing them such a great favor: “Hey, guys, Turow and Cunningham may be too busy to help anyone, but let’s all go sic Author X – he’s a sap!”
Comment by Lauren Baratz-Logsted — 6/12/2005 @ 9:47 am
[...] Subjects Discussed: Stalking, dark comedy, intense behavior, Harriet Klausner, chick lit, keeping lists, sex, the politically incorrect, the menage a trois, class-based characters, free time, book tours, the relationship between publishers and online literary venues, FSG and Christopher Sorrentino’s Trance, the next generation of writers (McSweeney’s as homogeneous voice?), the telegenic requirements of writers, the cult of personality, clarifying the “Reading at Risk” controversy, the intentions of Bookmark Now, literary standards vs. enthusiasm, the Iliad as logline, responding to the “writing in unreaderly times” flap, individual vs. group reading, explaning the Nicholson Baker acknowledment. [...]
Pingback by Edward Champion’s Return of the Reluctant » The Bat Segundo Show #4 — 8/1/2005 @ 4:50 pm
[...] Tingle Alley’s posts and comments on acknowledgements got me all inspired and I wrote a new musing about it. Enjoy and feel free to comment on it here. [...]
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