The Hundred-Year House (37 page)

Oh Violet, Violet, Violet!
He wants to shout it, but he won’t.

Let me in.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is a novel about, among other things, how much artists need a community. These are a few of the communities that have sheltered me during the writing of this book:

The wonderful people of Viking and Penguin: Kathryn Court, Lindsey Schwoeri, Scott Cohen, Veronica Windholz, Nina Hnatov, Nancy Resnick, and Kristen Haff; as well as Josh Cochran, who gave Laurelfield the red sky it needed.

The stupendous Nicole Aragi (the Queen of Pentacles) and Duvall Osteen.

A phalanx of early editors: the writers M. Molly Backes, Alex Christensen, John Copenhaver, Tim Horvath, Brian Prisco, and Emily Gray Tedrowe; and the readers (the world needs more readers like them) Shelley Gentle, Margaret Kelley, and Pamela Minkler.

The friends who let me bother them about technical details (and aren’t responsible for my errors): the writer David M. Harris on series ghostwriting; the writer Margaret Zamos-Monteith and the photographer Matthew Monteith on photographic history and 1920s darkrooms; Edward McEneely on WWII history (so much work for so few words!); and my social media hive-mind for everything from the drying time of oil paint to oak stump decomposition to pry bars.

The Sewanee Writers’ Conference, where the first chapters were encouraged, and where Christine Schutt’s kind read convinced me to keep working on this book.

The colleges on Chicago’s North Shore that have been kind enough, in the time since I originally drafted the first part of this novel, to welcome me to campus or let me teach. The college in this book is explicitly
not
based on any of those institutions.

The Ragdale Foundation and The Corporation of Yaddo, and everyone I met at both, whose work–from sonnets to paintings to smashed teacups–has inspired my last few years. What sort of world would this be, without refuges?

My family–Jon, Lydia, Heidi, Mom–who have been, variously, great editors and/or less requiring of diaper changes than they were three years ago.

Also, all five of the people I’ve forgotten.

This book started as a short story about male anorexia. I have no idea what the hell
happened.