Acknowledgments

I owe much gratitude to many people:

The title “Two Sad Clowns” is taken from an illustration by my great good friend Marguerite White, with whom I have been talking about art and other things for nearly forty years. I thank her for that and so much more.

Everyone at Ecco, especially Helen Atsma, Daniel Halpern, Miriam Parker, Sonya Cheuse, Allison Saltzman, and Sara Birmingham.

Everyone at Dunow, Carlson, and Lerner, especially Henry Dunow, who has been my agent and dear pal for thirty years.

Megan Lynch, for early faith in this book; my colleagues, particularly Lisa Olstein and Deb Olin Unferth; Catherine Nichols for last-minute name assistance; Lisa Sweasy of Vent-haven, for an interview about the late Jimmy Nelson that inspired a story.

Jonathan Green and Elizabeth Gallant Green, for shelter in any number of storms.

Arno, Claudia, and Callum Nauwels provided some notable architecture, Irish and Dutch.

Søren Lind and the Brecht Hus, for inspiration and lodging in Denmark.

Yiyun Li, with much love and gratitude for ineffable things, amid all the words.

Paul Lisicky and Ann Patchett, as usual, read this manuscript and were enormously helpful, kind, and generous. Scott Heim read these stories and gave me irreplaceable help, from sentence to paragraph to story.

Thanks to my family—including my brother, Harry, and his wife, Marie Domingo. My lovely in-laws—Mary Harvey and the late Simon Harvey; the late James Harvey; Simon, Catherine, Charlie, and Henrietta Burchell; Nicholas, Marie-Ange, Elfreda, and Oscar Harvey—resemble no fictional in-laws contained in this book.

Gus and Matilda Harvey are the children I would have invented for myself if my imagination were good enough.

To Edward Carey I owe debts, both literary and otherwise, that I have never successfully put into words.

“Proof,” “Mistress Mickle All at Sea,” “A Walk-Through Human Heart,”

“Birdsong from the Radio,” “Nothing, Darling, Only Darling, Darling,” and

“It’s Not You” were originally published in Zoetrope All-Story (with many thanks, as always, to Michael Ray). “Mistress Mickle All at Sea” and “It’s Not You” were published in The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, edited by Bill Henderson . “It’s Not You” was published in Best American Short Stories 2020 (with thanks to Curtis Sittenfeld and Heidi Pitlor).

“Birdsong from the Radio” was written for the anthology xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, edited by Kate Bernheimer; it was reprinted in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015, with thanks to Marissa Colón Margolies, Taylor Flory Ogletree, and Laura Furman. “Robinson Crusoe at the Waterpark” was originally published in Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre, edited by Tracy Chevalier . “Two Sad Clowns” was originally published in O: The Oprah Magazine. “The Get-Go” was originally published in American Short Fiction. “The Irish Wedding” was originally published in the Atlantic. “The Souvenir Museum” was originally published in Harper’s Magazine.