The Word Exchange (57 page)

Gave me back the page. And it says:

THE
END
BEGINNING

I have a real community of minds to thank.

I’m enormously grateful to my many brilliant and big-souled teachers: Francisco Goldman, Mary Gordon, Gabe Hudson, Heidi Julavits, Sam Lipsyte, Jaime Manrique, Ben Marcus, Carole Maso, Stephen O’Connor, Mark Slouka, Meredith Steinbach, and those at Carolina Friends School.

I’m more indebted than I could ever say to all my friends. Thank you especially to Claire Campbell, Rivka Galchen, Susanna Kohn, Reif Larsen, Nellie Hermann, Tania James, Maggie Pouncey, Karen Russell, and Karen Thompson Walker for reading so many of my words, so closely and kindly, over so many years. Huge thanks, too, to Sophie Barrett, Stuart Blumberg, Charlie Capp, and Jennie Goldstein for offering your essential thoughts on earlier drafts of this book.

To Field Maloney, who years ago gave me a copy of Henry Hitchings’s fantastic book
Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary
, and who encouraged me to begin writing this one, you have my lifelong gratitude. Thank you, too, for giving me vital advice about both the business of writing and how I might improve mine (if only I could, in fact, write more like Bolaño and Hemingway, or you). Thank you, too, for lending a few of your aphorisms and mannerisms to these pages, which have been scattered over several characters (none of whom resemble you in any other way, clearly).

Thank you to Alison Callahan, whose large-hearted and rigorous edits made this book immeasurably better; to the very gracious, inventive, and funny Gerry Howard; and to the heroic James Melia. Thanks, too, to Michael Collica, Emily Mahon, Jeremy Medina, John Pitts, Nora Reichard, Alison Rich, and all the other wonderful people at Doubleday, working away in that big glass building on Broadway.

My deepest appreciation to Robin Desser and Bob Gottlieb for being extraordinary mentors on literature, the art of editing, and life.

I’m immensely grateful to Susan Golomb for believing so ardently in this book. Enormous thanks, too, to Soumeya Bendimerad and Krista Ingebretson.

Thanks to the Corporation of Yaddo, the Jentel Artist Residency, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center (where I began the first draft of this novel in 2008 and the final draft in 2012), and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. My greatest appreciation, too, to my former colleagues at PEN for being so supportive when I left to finish the book at these various Shangri-las.

Thank you to the philosopher Jim Vernon, whose brains are rivaled only by his benevolence, and whose book
Hegel’s Philosophy of Language
was indispensable to me. He offered vital guidance on sections of this book having to do with Hegel. Many of the Hegel translations cited herein are his, as is the theory Bart alludes to about Hegel and universal grammar.

For invaluable information about how computers and the Internet work, my hat is always and forever off to Will Roberts, and especially to the eternally patient David Wu, whose help to me should constitute a life’s worth of mitzvahs.

Thank you to John Simpson, who was Chief Editor of the
Oxford English Dictionary
until October 2013. He very generously met with me for several hours in the
OED
’s Oxford offices, and answered my many questions with equanimity, humor, and grace. Huge thanks, too, to Jesse Sheidlower. He likewise kindly met with me, in the
OED
’s New York offices, and later read an inordinate number of this novel’s pages. Would that I could have incorporated all his excellent advice.

My tremendous gratitude to the incomparable Seyed Safavynia for giving me far more of his time than is in any way reasonable. It’s thanks to Seyed that the Meme exists in its current form, and that I know a little something about how the human brain works.

While researching this book, I read a lot of other books. Among them: several of Simon Winchester’s, including
The Professor and the Madman;
Nicholas Carr’s
The Shallows
, which significantly informed many of Doug’s disquisitions on how our changing relationship to technology has reshaped our thinking;
Cyber War
by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake; and Sol Steinmetz’s
Semantic Antics
, which was especially
helpful when I was writing Bart’s ruminations on language. I read a lot about pneumatic tubes, too. Especially helpful was the report
Development of the Pneumatic-tube and Automobile Mail Service
published by the U.S. Congress in 1917. I also regularly consulted the online edition of the
OED
(which cannot be blamed for the improbability of my own “definitions”), and I read parts of Sidney Landau’s
Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography
. I’m particularly beholden, too, to David Foster Wallace’s extraordinary essay “Authority and American Usage,” which in some ways got this whole ball really rolling, and to Rivka Galchen for directing me to it.

Thanks also to: Steve Duncan for all things spelunking-related. Max Kardon for bequeathing me a crucial sentence. Mark Kirby for amiably uncrinkling the Deep Springs section.

Plaudits to Onnesha Roychoudhuri for providing critical, eleventh-hour guidance, including information about key architectural elements of the Center for Fiction (also known as the Mercantile Library).

My huge appreciation, too, to the Center for Fiction’s Kristin Henley.

I’m indebted to Cressida Leyshon for offering thoughtful counsel at a decisive time.

Warm encomiums to Amanda Valdez, and once again to Jennie Goldstein, for being art-history geniuses.

My gratitude to Amy Barefoot for sharing her considerable musical expertise.

Thanks, too, to the inimitable Dave Graedon for more things than I can name, including fielding dozens if not hundreds of bizarre inquiries with good humor, wisdom, and heart, and introducing me over the years to much of my favorite literature, art, and music. I.e., for being the greatest brother imaginable.

Thanks to all the friends who sheltered me and offered every form of sustenance during the peripatetic year when I was finishing this book. I’ve mentioned many of you above for other kindnesses. I’d also like to thank Emily Alexander and Vernon Chatman, Vivian Berger and Michael Finkelstein, Julia Bloch, Jill Fitzsimmons and Josh Watson, Danielle and Alex Mindlin, Lauren Waterman and Andrei Kaullaur, Reilly Coch, and especially Flannery Hysjulien, without whom I would be an entirely different person.

Thanks to Anna, Yotam, and Finnegan Haber, Nam Le, Emma Schwarcz, and all the satellite members of the Hancock house. Thanks
to Anna in particular for coining so many ingenious metaphors, e.g., thoughts that pop up like corks.

Thanks to Annie Fain Liden, Georgia Smith, Shala, and Cathy and the girls for buoying me through all the beautiful months in Asheville.

And to Dan-Avi Landau, thank you for everything. I couldn’t have finished this book without you. Thank you for helping me invent the Nautilus, for explaining retrotransposons and logic gates, for introducing me to
Spiegel im Spiegel
and to so many other things. Thank you for letting me attribute some of your ideas to Dr. Barouch. Thank you for your unrivaled and unbridled creativity, and for reading this book with such tenderness and brilliance. Thank you for teaching me about everything that matters.

Finally, my gratitude to my parents is so profound that for once, it has left me without words.

Alena Graedon was born in Durham, North Carolina, and is a graduate of Carolina Friends School, Brown University, and Columbia University’s MFA program. She has worked at Knopf and the PEN American Center.
The Word Exchange
, her first novel, was completed with the help of fellowships at several artist colonies. It has been translated into eight languages. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.