Not long after the New Millennium party, I will begin to pretend that I can’t speak at all, and I will converse only with my dog, whose name I sometimes forget, and for the next year and a half I will live quietly in my hexagonal house on the Isle of Palms as I write out this account. I do not remodel my house, and I forget entirely about the alarm system, because I am no longer angry or afraid. I am, in fact, oddly happy, serene, at peace, which seems like God’s final joke.
In the summer of 2001, I will return to Naxos, where I will be floating in salty water when the third stroke comes, staring down at the tightly fitted stones, and I will drift for several hours before anyone discovers I am gone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
So many people have helped me focus and refocus (and refocus) this novel through its many drafts that I am afraid of forgetting someone, so please forgive me if I have. First, my colleagues at Connecticut College, Julie Rivkin, Liz Reich, James Downs, Candace Howes, Stuart Vyse, Suzuko Knott, Steven Shoemaker, Claudia Highbaugh, and John Gordon have all offered me crucial feedback, criticisms, and much-needed encouragement. Writer Sharon Thompson has been amazingly patient and generous, as was my former editor at The Village Voice, the inimitable M Mark, under whose mentorship I first found my authentic voice. My dear friend Elyse Cherry read every iteration, and seemingly able to hold them all in her head, talked with me for hours as I tried to work through the meaning of what I was writing. The dazzling young writer (and my former student) Jessica Soffer exchanged manuscripts with me, and we critiqued and supported each other as much as we could. Several other fine novelists—William Lychack, Harlan Greene, and Jesse Kornbluth—offered me detailed responses to ragged earlier versions, playwright Meryl Cohn spent endless hours on the phone with me discussing characters and actions, and Shannon Keating, Emily Becker, and Nat Rivkin—three more of my many distinguished former students—also have helped me a great deal. My previous editor Gary Fisketjon enabled me to see what was not yet working in several drafts, and over the last dozen years many students have sat through readings of various scenes and fragments. I am grateful to you all. My agent, Malaga Baldi, has been—and continues to be—a wonderful support, and it was she who led to me to my brilliant editor Dan Smetanka at Counterpoint, the first person who has ever actually convinced me to change a scene. And, of course, I am grateful to my family. First a shout-out to my mother-in-law, Sandra Hyman, whom I cherish more than she may know, and to my brother, Charlie McCrary, a very nice guy, who is being a good sport since he’s nothing like the brother in this novel. But most importantly, let me try to express what feels unspeakable: my abiding love and appreciation for my wife Leslie Hyman, and for our twins, Julia and James Hyman. I could not have lived into this century without you.
BLANCHE McCRARY BOYD has taught at Connecticut College since 1982. She has written four novels—Terminal Velocity, The Revolution of Little Girls, Mourning the Death of Magic, and Nerves—as well as a collection of essays, The Redneck Way of Knowledge. Among the awards Boyd has won are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Fellowship, a Creative Writing Fellowship from the South Carolina Arts Commission, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing from Stanford University.
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