For my author friends … a description of the ‘undercurrent of faux-modest self-promotion [which] runs like a viral strain throughout every acknowledgments page’. (We refer to them as ‘Ackowledgements’ — an inside joke after an unfortunate and undetected-until-too-late typographical error.)
A lively, little-bit-snarky, enjoyable read: Against Acknowledgments by Sam Sacks at the New Yorker magazine. Funny.
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. “This is my fourteenth novel and I am as dependent as ever on the wisdom of others,” begins one, and another, plucked at random from a Barnes & Noble new-arrival shelf: “The creation of this book has removed any notion I may have had of it being a solo endeavor.” …
Read Sam Sacks’s insights (harsh but true) at The New Yorker.
– P
