I Just Want to Thank...

In yesterday's NYT the book critic Jennifer Senior told the readers she will be leaving her job as a book critic for the Times. Where she's going she didn't say, but she leaves her readers with her thoughts on the Acknowledgment part of books that is now so prevalent.

This is where the author thanks whomever they want to. The list can be long, short, flowery, trite, moving, whatever. Ms. Senior helps us translate what some of these tidbits really mean. She admits that she's written acknowledgments herself.

I was moved to leave a comment last night. When I got there there were all of 7 comments already filed, some that only were expressing sadness at her leaving. I don't know how this makes someone feel, that their bylined work in a newspaper with the reach of the NYT only moves 7 people. now 8 to leave a  comment. The comment count this morning as I write this is now 22. The capacity of a good hotel's elevator.

The comment count can probably be seen as an indicator about how little people care about book acknowledgments. I will admit I do read them, but I can never put faces on all the names that are listed. It's like grabbing a phone book and flipping through the pages. I don't know any of those people either.

My own comment to Ms. Senior's piece was that if you watch an old movie on Turner and catch the credits you will never see that Best Boy, Key Grip, the caterer, or the mayor's office of Ottawa are acknowledged. The credits are not interminable.

I do not know when acknowledgements started to appear in publishing. Perhaps when word processing was introduced. I remember Russell Baker in a column attributed the doorstopper length of novels that were then being written to the fact that now the writing was done on a computer by most writers. This easily led to more pages. And probably acknowledgements. After all, writer's cramp from using a fountain pen had now been replaced with a QWERTY keyboard.

I further posed the rhetorical question if Hemingway listed the support he got from whomever when he finished a book? Did he when publishing 'Old Man and the Sea' thank that captain who was guiding the boat that he was on while drinking scotch and fishing for marlin in Key West? Did Hemingway thank the deck hands, the scotch, the marlin, or the tuna?

I once did respond once to an Author's Query in the NYT Book review asking for anything anyone had to share about Eric Severid, the TV journalist who looked the part of a talking head before the phrase came in to existence.

Eric was older, with thinning but well groomed silver hair who wore a good looking suit when he imparted his wisdom to the audience. He had bearing. You could sense he'd been around the world and seen plenty. And that's because he had, because he was a WW II correspondent and was now opining from experience and not speculation. The, "I think they are going to have to..." drivel that spouts from 25 year-old "Senior Political Correspondents" that have spent more time being groomed than reading or being anywhere noteworthy. Fluff pieces.

The author's query came from Richard A. Schroth, S.J. In 1995 he subsequently published a biography of Mr. Sevareid, 'The American Journey of Eric Sevareid,'  I bought and read the book. When I read the acknowledgements I was surprised to see that my name appears in the acknowledgement section, along with a host of other names, names of people I of course didn't know then, and still don't know.

My shared anecdote about Mr. Sevareid appears nowhere in the book, but the author, I guess in the spirit of fair play, included my name.

I'm likely the only one who on reading my name knows who that is. A real acknowledgement would have been a free autographed copy of the book.

Packing a book up and mailing it to me after standing in line at the post office ...now that tells me you are grateful.

hrrp://www.onofframp.blogspot.com