I recently came accross a book I first read when it was a raging sensation (circa 1978) in Hyde Park, prominently positioned at all the bookstores – and there were many back then – in and around the University of Chicago. Pride in a native son.

The genesis of “A River Runs Through It” is as fascinating and inspiring as the novel itself, and I cannot think of the book without rekindling the thrill of reading the Acknowledgement. “Although it’s a little book, it took a lot of help to become a book at all. When one doesn’t start out to be an author until he has reached his biblical allotment of three score years and ten, he needs more than his own power.”

With the thrill rekindled and lingering, I find myself recalling Acknowledgements, Dedications and Author Prefaces that continue to reverberate long after I first delighted in their stirring artistry.

A few that have reverberated consistently over the years (and I rely upon an imperfect memory):

1. “All that is meant, And that will be understood, Cannot be expressed in a dedication. This book is for Claire.” A glimpse into a deep and private love. Spare and voluminous. From Bork’s “The Antitrust Paradox.”

2. “Some people, once met, simply elbow their way into a novel and sit there till the writer finds them a place. Dick is one. I am sorry I could not obey his urgent exhortation and libel him to the hilt. My cruelest efforts could not prevail against the the affectionate nature of the original.” Lines that are infused with pathos and vitality in the work that follows. From Le Carre’s “The Honorable Schoolboy.”

3. And, finally, to close out this entry, I commend the entire oeuvre of Graham Greene. Quoting Leon Bloy in “The End of the Affair”: “Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering in order that they may have existence.”

To would-be Literature PhDs in search of a dissertation topic, may I suggest, as a topic, an exploration of the jewels and gems within Acknowledgements, Dedications and Author Prefaces.