Elliot Allagash
Page 18
My dad, stepmom, and brother cheered me on throughout the writing process. And my friends heroically bore with me during the periods in which I was insane. There’s not enough room to thank them all, but here are some: Azhar Khan, Monica Padrick, Josh Morgenthau, Brent Katz, Caitlin Petre, Steve Bender, Nick McDonell, Amanda Miller, Francesca Mari, David Herson, and Kathleen Hale.
Over the course of my short career, I’ve been lucky to collaborate with a lot of amazing writers. I’ve learned a lot from all of them and I wanted to list at least some here: Josh Koenigsberg, Bill Hader, Marika Sawyer, John Mulaney, Colin Jost, Seth Meyers, Bryan Tucker, Andy Samberg, Dan Menaker, Farley Katz, Zach Kanin, Andrei Nechita.
The writer Erik Kenward introduced me to the term “garbage animals.” And my father deserves full credit for the “Where’s the fish” story. He told it to me when I was eleven (and insists to this day that it is true!).
Thanks to Charles Dickens, P. G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Roald Dahl, Terry Southern, David Sedaris, and the Simpsons.
Also: Evan Camfield, Simon M. Sullivan, Jennifer Huwer, Meghan Cassidy, Ben Wiseman, Caleb Beyers, Dustin Lushing, Lorne Michaels, Mike Shoemaker, Steve Higgins, Gregory McKnight, Shari Smiley, Forrest Church, Michael Hertzberg, and the park rangers of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.
And finally…
Jake Luce provided criticism, advice, and encouragement at every stage of the creative process, from the novel’s inception to its publication. I dedicated the book to him, but he probably belongs on the cover. I consider this book his as much as mine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SIMON RICH has written for The New Yorker, GQ, Mad, The Harvard Lampoon, and other magazines. He is the author of two humor collections, Free-Range Chickens and Ant Farm, which was a finalist for the 2008 Thurber Prize for American Humor. He lives in Brooklyn and writes for Saturday Night Live.
Elliot Allagash is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Simon Rich
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Rich, Simon.
Elliot Allagash : a novel / Simon Rich
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-679-60377-1
1. Preparatory school students—Fiction. 2. Preparatory schools—Fiction.
3. Children of the rich—Fiction. 4. Money—Fiction. 5. Male
friendship—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3618.I33353E66 2010
813′.6—dc22 2009043885
www.atrandom.com
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