Michael Chabon, Defender of the AcknowledgmentLast week, Times books reporter Julie Bosman took a swipe at Norman Mailer’s Aeneid-length acknowledgments. In today’s letter column, Pulitzer-winning novelist Michael Chabon presents a defense:
Here’s a crazy reason your article did not mention for including an acknowledgment at the end of your novel: to acknowledge. If there is some kind of old-fashioned virtue in concealing one’s debt to and gratitude for the hard work of others, it’s difficult for me to see where it lies.
But of course Chabon approves of the public airing of private gratitude. He’s married, after all, to novelist Ayelet Waldman, who famously published a certain delightful bit in a March 2005 “Modern Love” column. What did she have to say?
