Given the time of year, it seems appropriate to be writing about expressing gratitude. It was nice to learn that I'm not alone in my fascination with acknowledgements sections in books (and, I might add, thank yous in album liner notes).
As Hannah Jane Parkinson put it in a short piece for the Guardian back in April, "I enjoy scanning the names to see if there is someone I recognise; as though I am spotting two people I did not know were friends dining together in a restaurant". Acknowledgements are a gift to the inquisitive consumer - a way of discovering hitherto unknown personal connections and influences.
Beyond being mere fodder for the nosy, though, these credits serve an important function (one that Jen Calleja and others critical of "the cult of the individual" would heartily endorse): they are an opportunity for the author or artist to be generous and to underline that the products of the creative process "could not have come into being without all the support and advice and friendship and hard work of others" and that "no matter the trope of the toiling writer in a solitary study, life - in all its glory and achievement - is a team sport".
Needless to say, when I had the chance to compile a list of credits at the end of my PhD thesis, it stretched to several pages...
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