I always think of the child as a girl. What if it’s a boy?
Oh, it couldn’t be. .
Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me, is matter of profound wonder.
My thanks to Alice Quinn, my editor at Knopf, for hours, weeks, and months she spent on this book. Thanks also to Margaret Cheney, the copy editor, who has followed every parenthesis and sentence with the most exacting attention. And thanks to my friend Robert Walsh, a young writer and editor of great gifts, who has read the book several times and encouraged me at every turn to believe in the American heart of its common sense and heartfelt and humorous extremities. And thanks to Chris Carroll for help when I needed it.
My thanks also to the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts for grants, and to Queens College of The City University of New York for paid time-off from teaching, and to the University of New Mexico for the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship in San Cristobal, New Mexico.
J.M.