” … most of the rest of the world [was] remarkably patient about this [book] being finished.
Not everyone was so kindly, and I often took solace in Wallace Steven’s sensible reply to why it took him so long to publish. ‘A book of poetry is a serious thing.’ A work of history is at least as deadly serious, and it needs footnotes, too. The thick seriousness of this volume, when unfinished anyway, provided amusement to a wide circle of family and friends for whom age could not stale the finite variety of variations on a theme. ‘With this global warming, do you think you’ll be done before the floods?’ ‘Are you calling it Molasses in January??’ ‘Is it required that historians take as long write as the history took happening?’ ‘Have I finished vacuuming? Have you finished the book?’ Such poor humor has done much to create human ties, binding the generations, my parents to my children; the extended family, unnumberable siblings and offspring and Pat’s children and friends; and a section of the local community sizable enough. No greater gift can be made to family and community than soldering such bonds of amusement and comfortable sense of superiority. I’m glad to have contributed to them so generously.”
— David Grimsted in the preface to American Mobbing
