Thank yous in books

I was finishing my autographic book a few years ago ""A Passion to Build" when a dear friend of mine sagely advised me to make sure that the finished book had neither an acknowledgement section nor an appendix. Curious at this advise, I asked him why. His sage reply; " If you do, you will lose both your friends and many of your readers: the former because you have not thanked them enough and the latter  will only read the sections of your book that have their names on them!"

Now Sam Sacks of the Wall Street Journal, in an article, rails against the commercialisation of the book industry today. And he takes off against a surprising part of the industry- the author of the book. He criticizes the authors for caving in to the publishers and always attaching a separate chapter on acknowledgement at the end of the book.

Acknowledgments typically open with a statement to the effect that, although writing is lonely work, the author could never have completed his book without help and support. They are the Thank You Oscar speech of the writer. And like the Oscars, the thanking is long and tedious.

Of course, it is right and proper to be grateful to the people who helped you in your endeavor by sharing memories or thoughts or in other ways, and if it were done less obtrusively, there would be something sweet about crediting them in the book. But because the acknowledgments page functions primarily as an extension of the book’s publicity, it tends to become far more than that. What seems to be far more common is for a writer to offer his thanks in such a way as to announce the tremendous effort he himself put into writing and revising the book. One author humblebragged that his first draft was so marked up that he’d had “first-year French essays that came back clearer.” This undercurrent of faux-modest self-promotion runs like a viral strain throughout every acknowledgments page. 

After the professional shout-outs comes the collegial name-dropping, when writers thank the published novelists who taught at their M.F.A. programs or lectured at their writers’ retreats. Friendly as this may seem, it often has the comical side effect of counteracting the efforts of the book’s publicity department, since the authors being thanked are usually the same people who have written the blurbs. Perhaps readers already know that book publishing is an insular, back-scratching industry, but does it have to be revealed quite so openly?

Next our scrupulously thorough author will thank the fellowships and grant organizations that subsidized his work—and here we have the pleasure of seeing a novel transform into a billboard. Even the acknowledgment page’s fig leaf of justification—that it would be churlish not to credit the people who helped midwife the work—now vanishes, because, pace the  US Supreme Court, corporations are not people. When a writer thanks Yaddo, he’s not being gracious to anybody; he’s just telling the world that he went to Yaddo.

Typically, it’s around this point that the author will turn his attention to the little people. The difficulty here seems to be similar to that faced by a couple choosing their wedding guests: once you start putting second-tier names on the list, it’s impossible to know when to stop. The author is usually reduced to a rolling eructation of proper names, like this case in point: “Kevin Spall, Angie Fugate, Josh Mosher, Heather Shultes, Kandy Tobias, Sue Lube, Jenny Taylor, Mike Shubel, Rich McDonald, Andrea Koerte, Rick Goss, Christina Ballard, Frankie Hall….”That particular list may well continue for another forty-two names. 

It’s all meant to seem very generous, but readers are within their rights to be skeptical. For one thing, the gratitude is unwarranted. Despite protests to the contrary, novel-writing is necessarily solitary; however well-meaning they may be, friends, family, lovers, and colleagues will only ever hinder the process (the most they can do—and it’s no small thing—is forgive the author for ignoring them). But on the off chance that they really did help with the creation of the book, how meagerly they’ve been rewarded! Is it really so gratifying to be recognized in print when your name is included on a list that looks like the bcc line of a mass e-mail?

Finally, the acknowledgments page will conclude with the sort of crowd-pandering favored by stumping politicians—with expressions of awe and humility for the author’s supportive parents, brilliant children, and devoted spouse. Apparently having dedicated the book to these same people in the front of the book was insufficient as a gesture. Even so, you’d think that they might have a little more respect for the book that they have presumably worked hard on. 

Instead, why not reserve your thank-yous for your Web site, where the interested can seek them out? Or, as some canny authors have done, hide them in the small print of the copyright page. The best solution of all, of course, is to write a few masterpieces. Become great, and all the picayune biographical details that bored and annoyed us will suddenly become numinous with secret importance. We’ll want to know all about your editors and childhood friends and Starbucks baristas—you’ll be giving them true posterity.

"Until then," says Sam, " adoréd authors: spare us. Readers of fiction are an embattled lot, and the buzzing of book promotion is only one of many distractions that cut into the extended quiet needed to disappear into a novel. We’ve already ceded to a fair share of compromises. We know that the blurbs are very often polite exaggerations and we know that the jacket copy is pablum; we even keep quiet when it’s obvious that your author photo has been retouched. All we ask is that you don’t let that same commercial rot spread inside the book’s covers."