Grateful acknowledgment is made to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Leon Levy Foundation for their very generous support of my work, and to Blue Mountain Center and the American Academy in Rome for providing time and space to think and write.
I am equally indebted to friends and family. Special thanks to my wonderful agent, Emily Forland, and to her fellow agent, Emma Patterson, both such wise advisers; to my editor at the New York Times, Peter Catapano, who deftly edited several early pieces in this book; to the Virginia Quarterly Review; to Steven Barclay—such a big-hearted friend; to Jane Breyer, Paul Wisotzky, and Melaine Zimmerman, for being there twice (and many times more); to Joel Conarroe, Kate Edgar, Mark Morris, and Richard Rodriguez, for their encouragement and support; to Lisa Garrigues, for her careful read of the manuscript at a crucial stage; to Cindy Loh, George Gibson, Alexandra Pringle, and the entire team at Bloomsbury in the U.S. and the UK; and especially to my longtime editor and friend, Nancy Miller, who has believed in my work from the beginning. It is to her that I have dedicated this book, with gratitude. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my first agent, the late great Wendy Weil, who looked me in the eye one day years ago and told me I really should think about doing a New York book.