Why Frank always reads an author’s Acknowledgements…
How often do you bother to read an author’s Acknowledgements, if they are included before or after the main body of a book’s text? I must admit I always used to skip them, until, some years ago, reading Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls by Edward E Leslie, I was struck by the fact that his list of acknowledgements went on for pages and pages, and was far more than a mere list of names. It forms, indeed, almost a separate essay. Ever since, I invariably take a moment to check whether there is perhaps more interest in a list of acknowledgements that might be supposed.
And thus I came upon this gem from Rayner Heppenstall, about whom I have written before. The “Acknowledgements And Disclaimer” in his 1943 novel Saturnine begin unpromisingly enough, but the diligent reader is soon rewarded:
Fragments of this narrative have appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Kingdom Come, The New English Weekly and Partisan Review. It is fiction. Outside pp. 130-134, all the characters are imaginary, and no further reference is made to a living or recently deceased person except Messrs. L. N. Fowler of Ludgate Circus, Dr. Pearson of the Middlesex Hospital, the Grand Duke Cyril of Russia, Lifar, de Basil, Balanchine, Nijinsky, Legat and Diaghilev of the Russian ballet, Lawrence of Arabia and D. H. Lawrence, Duke Ellington, the late Canon H. R. L. Sheppard, Jessie Matthews and Sonnie Hale, Isobel Baillie and Anna Wickham, Lady Astor, Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson, Gabo, Miró and George Bernanos, Gordon Craig, Heifetz and Rudolf Steiner, a number of all-in wrestlers and Joe E. Brown, Clark Gable and the Chinese naval attaché, Marshal Pétain, M. Stalin and Mr. Winston Churchill, the late Mr. Neville Chamberlain, the Hangman and the reigning house of this realm.
In pages 130-134, incidentally, we meet Oskar Kokoschka. I have absolutely no idea why he is not “excepted” like those listed above.
I always read introductions and acknowledgements, but then I am a little odd
Makes a nice change from the usual ‘wor lass’, ‘me mam,’ ‘me dad,’ ‘Betty from the typing pool,’ ‘my good friend Emilia, without whose constant support and encouragement the book would never have been written.’ The last one, as ever, worth a nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
Nijinsky, would that be the horse or the dancer.
Among techies, the acknowledgement that Olin Shivers put at the front of the Scsh Reference Manuag is remembered: http://www.scsh.net/docu/html/man.html
Ha! That is excellent!
I remember being much amused by the simple one-liner in the sleeve to Gerry rafferty’s ‘City to City’ LP… “Thanks to all those who helped in the making of this record, and curses to those who hindered.”
Came across the following rather splendid rant the other day — the dedication to Logan, A Family History by the 19th-century US writer John Neal:
I do not dedicate my book to any body; for I know nobody worth dedicating it to. I have no friends, no children, no wife, no home – no relations, no well-wishers – nobody to love, and nobody to care for. To whom shall I, to whom can I dedicate it? To my Maker! It is unworthy of him. To my countrymen? They are unworthy of me. For the men of past ages I have very little veneration; for those of the present, not at all. To whom shall I entrust it? Who will care for me, by tomorrow? Who will do battle for my book, when I am gone? Will posterity? Yea, posterity will do me justice. To posterity then – to the winds! I bequeath it! I devote it – as a Roman would his enemy, to the fierce and unsparing charities of another world – to a generation of spirits – to the shadowy and crowned potentates of hereafter. I—I—I have done … farewell – farewell forever!”
Neal is pretty much forgotten now but seems to have been a fascinating character: Wikipedia describes him as “author and art/literary critic … early women’s rights advocate, prohibitionist, temperance advocate, opponent of dueling, accomplished lawyer, boxer, and architect.” They could also have added haberdasher, drawing teacher, real-estate dealer, quarry owner, gym manager, and sometime secretary to Jeremy Bentham. The author of two epic poems, six novels, and one of the first histories of American literature, he exulted in his ability to write at speed, claiming to have produced each of his novels in less than a month and one in less than a week (“I … write as others drink, for exhilaration!”).
His autobiography was entitled Wandering Recollections of a Somewhat Busy Life.