Speaking of acknowledgments, this funny piece, “Hi, Mom!”, by Moby Lives’ Dennis Loy Johnson plumbed the phenom of the super-long thanks back in 2000, back when “To Véra” started giving way to “To Véra, as she stood on the alpine altiplano with the butterfly net; to Dmitri, for keeping quiet while I transcribed from the Russian; to Chou, mon petit kitty.”
I’d like to thank Mr. Tingle for standing alone in the humid haze with the George Foreman grill and a can of Old Speckled Hen while I typed up this post.
That’s so mean! Particularly, as each point he makes easily applies to my own acknowledgments page . . . Ooops!
I know he’s being all droll and that, and that, yes, some ack pages verge on the cloying, but what is the author who acknowledges no one saying? No one helped them at all? While I can imagine that’s true in some cases, surely not the majority. It’s damned hard to write a book entirely alone with no assistance from librarians, or first readers, or the people you live with, or your agent or editor or copyeditor.
One of the things I enjoy about reading ack pages is seeing who likes working with whom. Which writers read and comment on each other’s work. The more gushing and long the acks the more readers like me find out.
Comment by Justine Larbalestier — 6/9/2005 @ 2:46 pm
Well, in the warm spirit you describe, J.L., I do agree … no one is harmed by an effusive ack. page (I love reading that as “ack!”, by the by) and it is certainly nice to see an author be collegial and grateful and (as a reader) to get the buzz on new writers to search out. And the thanks can often be funny and charming.
That said, I do like the pristine simplicity of a “To Véra” and that, say, Lolita contains no references to librarians or pedophiles who were helpful in the writing of the novel. Yet when I ask myself why, I have no idea. Except that it’d be like finishing watching a play and having the costume designer and props guy come trotting out for a bow, like having the backstage come forward.
But since the costume designer et al get thanked in the program that metaphor doesn’t quite hold up.
Like Jenny D., I’ve taken a long time with this first novel … so my acks. will drag on and on, as I have to thank everyone that’s waited around for so long for the novel’s appearance.
Comment by CAAF — 6/9/2005 @ 11:58 pm
And we must not forget Elizabeth Wurtzel, still the undefeated champ of the acknowledgements page(s)– at least judging from a March 2002 Salon article by Tom Bissell. (It’s called “Thanks. A Lot.” and is still available in the Salon archive, though you do have to watch an ad to get to it.) It might also be interesting to figure out when (and maybe even why) acknowledgements started to appear on the current scale – I don’t recall noticing them in my (distant) youth, particularly for fiction.
Comment by Anne Denoon — 6/10/2005 @ 10:54 am