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We said the usual hopeless things one said about the sadness and awful senselessness of it all as the soft machinery of shock and mourning took shape elsewhere in the city, the candlelight vigils to come, the chorusing of “Imagine” and “Give Peace a Chance.”

The Christmas lights in midtown looked incongruous, an irony we could have done without. The driver had lowered the radio volume again, as if respecting our quiet, or sensing we had heard enough, and beside me Pauline said, “I wish the movie had been better. It had so much going for it.” “I guess this just wasn’t our night,” I said. “It wasn’t anyone’s night,” Pauline said, and it got quiet again as the Christmas lights continued to go by.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost to my editor, Gerald Howard, the sort of editor everybody insists doesn’t exist anymore, but how wrong they are, as I and this book can attest. He initiated the idea for Lucking Out and kept the project alive with encouragement and enthusiasm during its choppy passages at sea after I had swallowed the compass. Thanks too to editorial assistant Hannah Wood at Doubleday and to copy editor Ingrid Sterner, who tweezed the text with nimble precision. My agent, Elyse Cheney, is the dynamo every writer dreams of having in his corner. And the last two decades of my life as a writer would be unimaginable if it weren’t for the creative support and spirited generosity of Aimee Bell, my editor at Vanity Fair, and of the magazine’s editor, the phenomenal Graydon Carter.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published and unpublished material:

Alfred Music Publishing Co. Inc., and Hal Leonard Corporation: Excerpt from “Loudmouth” words and music by Johnny Ramone, Dee Dee Ramone, Tommy Ramone, and Joey Ramone, copyright © 1977 by Mutated Music (ASCAP), Bleu Disque Music (ASCAP), and Taco Tunes (ASCAP), copyright renewed. All rights for Bleu Disque Music and Taco Tunes administered by WB Music Corp. All rights for Mutated Music administered by BMG Chrysalis. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Alfred Music Publishing Co. Inc., and Hal Leonard Corporation.

Rhoda Wolf: Excerpt from letter from Dan Wolf to James Wolcott. Reprinted by permission of Rhoda Wolf.

The Wylie Agency LLC: January 1972 letter from Norman Mailer to Dan Wolf, copyright © 2011 by the Norman Mailer Estate. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

ALSO BY JAMES WOLCOTT

ATTACK POODLES AND OTHER MEDIA MUTANTS: THE LOOTING OF THE NEWS IN A TIME OF TERROR

THE CATSITTERS: A NOVEL