{"id":17968,"date":"2011-07-06T11:28:57","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T15:28:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=17968"},"modified":"2011-07-06T11:46:43","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T15:46:43","slug":"on-acknowledgements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/06\/on-acknowledgements\/","title":{"rendered":"On Acknowledgements"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Anyone who wants to study writers\u2019 idiosyncrasies need look no further than their acknowledgments. One contemporary author thanks her therapist, another his probation officer, a third someone he calls the \u201cInfamous Frankie G.\u201d In the backs of books I\u2019ve found shout-outs to the Ship Manager of HM Frigate Unicorn; a book on Satanism; and an ice hotel. But alongside the quirky is also the heartfelt. I\u2019ve encountered declarations of love\u2014\u201cmy children, my jewels\u201d; \u201cwithout you, I\u2019d be sunk\u201d; \u201cnot only the most supportive parents a writer could ask for but the most loving, kind, and inspiring people I know.\u201d One set of thank-yous closes with the code IALYAAT<\/em>, which I hope means, \u201cI Always Love You At All Times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Acknowledgments also offer an all-too-rare view of the writer as actual human being. We often think we\u2019re seeing the author\u2019s real self when we read her fiction, but as any author who\u2019s ever been asked what happened after she fled her family of international superspies and threw in her lot with a group of itinerant circus performers knows only too well, this is a delusion. The acknowledgments at the back of a novel are tantalizing because they\u2019re often the only true thing amid a pack of lies. And at the end of a really great book, how wonderful to recognize that it was written not by a monolith or a beam of white light or the manifestation of the goddess Athena, but by a living, breathing person who remembered to thank her agent.<\/p>\n

At least, how wonderful for some. As a person come relatively recently to the literary world, I\u2019ve made several assumptions about acknowledgments that have turned out to be wrong. First, I\u2019ve always assumed that everybody wants to read long acknowledgments. I want a glimpse, however illusory, into the author\u2019s personal life; I want to know who her readers were and who her best friend is and who let her stay in their house one summer even though she was anxious and surly and didn\u2019t do dishes. A little research, however, shows my predilections aren\u2019t necessarily shared. The journalist Jennifer 8. Lee, for instance, came in for some ribbing<\/a> from Gawker for her thank-yous, which began with the phrase \u201ca personal literary project like this has a long trajectory,\u201d and then launched into a long trajectory of their own, stretching over four pages.<\/p>\n

Emily Gould (writing under the name Emily G<\/a>.) penned a particularly biting and entertaining takedown<\/a> of the long acknowledgment, as practiced by Chuck Klosterman and Steve Almond. She exhorts writers to avoid nicknames: \u201cThe only reason anyone wants their name in the acks is to help them get jobs in the future, and if you refer to them only as \u2018Young Bull Patterson,\u2019 (Steve) their goals will not be furthered, unless their goals are rodeo-related.\u201d She illustrates why they might want to refrain from thanking God: \u201cKlosterman thanks God for helping him to write a shortish, go-nowhere, cutesy book about a brief road trip he took to rock stars’ death sites. This is kind of like R. Kelly thanking God for helping him to write a song called \u2018Sex Weed,\u2019 except less hilarious.\u201d And she winds up with the following advice:<\/p>\n

\n

I just want to plead anyone out there who might be about to publish a book to have pity on the world, look out for your own best interests, and keep your acknowledgments spare or nonexistent. Your readers, trust me, will be thanking YOU.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Admittedly, it\u2019s hard to stick to the rules, even if you wrote them. Gould ignored some of her own advice when she published her first book five years later,\u00a0And the Heart Says Whatever<\/em>. Her acknowledgments do spill over onto a second page and include some of her helpmeets\u2019 first names\u00a0(which is a bit more transparent than using their initials\u2014a tactic employed by some secretive contemporary writers). However, she doesn\u2019t thank God, nor does she go through an exhaustive list of everyone she\u2019s ever known. Instead, she writes, \u201cThanks to my friends. It pains me not to list you all, but I tried and then got too paranoid about leaving someone out and offending him or her.\u201d This turns out to be a common anxiety. Andrew Altschul, author of Lady Lazarus and Deus Ex Machina<\/em>, told me, \u201cI start keeping a list of people to acknowledge long before I send a book to my editor, because I worry I\u2019ll forget to thank someone who’s helped me in some meaningful way. It\u2019s important to me\u2014people who have given time, effort, advice, et cetera really deserve to be acknowledged for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This challenged another of my rookie assumptions: that authors are always excited about writing their acknowledgments. A popular fantasy topic among never-published writers is whom you\u2019re going to thank (or pointedly refrain from thanking) on the back page of your book, and it\u2019s easy to assume that experienced writers relish the chance to list all their buddies a second or even a third time. In fact, the process appears to inspire as much fear as it does excitement. And Gould\u2019s tactic of avoiding the friend list may be a smart one. Altschul shares it:<\/p>\n

\n

I usually don\u2019t acknowledge people just because they\u2019re my friends or I like them, something that\u2019s gotten me in trouble once or twice\u2014for example, my wife isn\u2019t thanked in my first book, because by the time we met I was nearly done writing it. But I made it up to her the next time around: my second novel is dedicated to her.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Acknowledgments, of course, are not just\u2014or even primarily\u2014for the reader. They\u2019re personal notes to the writers\u2019 friends, loved ones, and colleagues, and it behooves him or her to check the list carefully before sending it off. Parsimony may be a good strategy here\u2014thanking only those people who, for instance, actually read the manuscript reduces one\u2019s chances of leaving somebody out, and eliminates the need to determine which friends are really close and influential enough to get a back-of-the-book nod.<\/p>\n

Of course, all this rests on one giant assumption\u2014that acknowledgments are separate from a work of fiction, that they, unlike everything forgoing, are real. Mark Danielewski turns this on its head with the following cryptic note in the \u201ccredits\u201d section of his novel House of Leaves<\/em>: \u201cSpecial thanks to the Talmor Zedactur Depositary [sic] for providing a VHS copy of \u2018Exploration #4.\u2019\u201d Exploration #4<\/em> is a short film made by the characters in the book, and unlikely to exist on VHS anywhere in this, our world\u2014the Talmor Zedactur Depositary appears to be similarly fictional. Some readers<\/a> speculate that the name is a family joke, as TZD are apparently the initials of the author\u2019s father. Another says, simply, \u201codviously a clever fiction but still makes u wonder doesn\u2019t it.\u201d And perhaps this is the mark of a truly great acknowledgment\u2014not that it satisfies with a comforting portrayal of the author as ordinary person, but that it maintains his or her mystique, making you wonder until the next book comes out.<\/p>\n

Anna North is the author of the novel <\/em>America Pacifica<\/a> and a staff writer at Jezebel.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone who wants to study writers\u2019 idiosyncrasies need look no further than their acknowledgments. One contemporary author thanks her therapist, another his probation officer, a third someone he calls the \u201cInfamous Frankie G.\u201d In the backs of books I\u2019ve found shout-outs to the Ship Manager of HM Frigate Unicorn; a book on Satanism; and an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[2763,2771,2764,17,2767,289,2766,2770,2769,2772,272,2768,2765,157],"class_list":["post-17968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-acknowledgements-2","tag-agent","tag-author","tag-books","tag-chuck-klosterman","tag-editor","tag-emily-gould","tag-gawker","tag-jennifer-8-lee","tag-mark-danielewski","tag-publishing","tag-steve-almond","tag-thank-you","tag-writers"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn Acknowledgements by Anna North<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"July 6, 2011 \u2013 Anyone who wants to study writers\u2019 idiosyncrasies need look no further than their acknowledgments. 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