Anderson started as a short story that kept getting longer and longer until I had to admit that it was a novel. Part of the reason that I had to admit it was because I was sending bits of it to Myron Campbell, whose curiosity about the character and excitement about what was happening and anticipation of what was going to happen next spurred me to elaborate on the matter. So I definitely have Myron to thank for that. Once I committed to it being a novel, I sent it in serialized form to him, Ravi Rajakumar and Trent Noble. They were an attentive audience whose feedback allowed me to gauge what was working and what was not. Ravi, as always, also provided much needed attention to errors and questions about unusual syntactic treatments, which is part of what I like to play around with. I’m additionally grateful to Myron and Trent for ideas on how to spread the word.
I gave an earlier version of the first few chapters to J.R. Carpenter, who’s general comments resulted in a very specific change to the novel’s flow. My sister Donna read a version and paid Anderson the incredible compliment of wanting to hang out with him. That endorsement meant a lot to me. Her husband, Bruce, also provided an insightful and critical reading.
I am ever grateful to my lovely Sandra Dametto for her support, inspiration and strong understanding of structure and story.
I feel very blessed to be part of the Pedlar Press family. Beth Follet is a dream I don’t care to awake from. Her sense of things is perfect, her editing spot on, and her support is amazing. Designer, Zab, is sublime, and I can’t believe how lucky I am to have two of my books designed by her.
Thanks to Larissa Lai, whose novels I love, for her support and endorsement and the amazing blurb she wrote for the back of the book.
General thanks go to Stuart Ross, Aaron Peck, Laurie Dawson, Mitchell Politeski, my remarkable mother Dot, sister Maureen and brother Ron.
The city characterized in this book is a composite of Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, New York City, San Francisco and somewhere else altogether imaginary. These cities have all been formative in some way or another of my interest, comprehension and apprehensions about cities conceptually, aesthetically, philosophically, socially, etc. —and by extension, are instrumental in the development of my general sense of place, what it means to belong somewhere, and the great mystery of being anywhere.
Certain music inspires, invokes, evokes certain spirits of writing. While writing Anderson I listened to a lot of jazz from the likes of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, Dana Reason, Art Blakey, Cecil Taylor, Max Roach, Herbie Hancock, and Frank Zappa, as well as things like Robert Fripp’s Frippertronics, King Crimson, Soft Machine, Brian Eno’s Ambient music, Talking Heads’ Fear of Music and Remain in the Light, Arcade Fire’s Funeral, Neu and Kraftwerk.
Other things that helped to spawn this work: Comics like Steve Ditko’s Doctor Strange, Neal Gaiman’s Sandman, The Hernandez Bros’ Love and Rockets, Herriman’s Krazy Kat, Segar’s Popeye and Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy; the Films Noire of the 1940s and 1950s; Humphrey Bogart’s John Huston and Howard Hawk’s films; films in general by Akira Kurosawa, Seijun Suzuki, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Fritz Lang and Orson Welles; writing by Gertrude Stein, Earnest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Neil Stephenson, Douglas Adams, Lao Tzu, and Eckhart Tolle; and cartoons by the Fleischer Bros, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Shamus Calhane and Fritz Freleng.
Thank you all.
