Companionship in Grief: Love and Loss in the Memoirs of C. S. Lewis, John Bayley, Donald Hall, Joan Didion, and Calvin Trillen

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments Companionship in Grief is my sixth book published by the University of Massachusetts Press, and I’m grateful to everyone associated with the Press: Bruce Wilcox, Director; Clark Dougan, Senior Editor; Carol Betsch, Managing Editor; and Anne R. Gibbons, copy editor par excellence . They have all become part of my extended family. I’m also grateful to the two anonymous outside readers who offered so many constructive comments on strengthening the manuscript. In addition, I’m indebted to the distinguished American poet and literary critic Sandra M. Gilbert , the author of several groundbreaking books on the literature of bereavement, for alerting me to important theoretical and critical studies of contemporary grief memoirs. David E. Balk, the editor-in-chief of the indispensable Handbook of Thanatology, called my attention to the “continuing bonds” theory of bereavement. My colleague Professor Martha Rozett read the manuscript carefully and offered helpful suggestions for revision, as did Charlotte Goodman, Professor Emerita of English, Skidmore College. I’m grateful to Donald Hall for his candid responses to an early version of chapter 3 that I mailed to him. Finally, I wish to thank Julie Nark for her labor of love in reading the manuscript and for her presence in my life. ix Companionship in Grief - ...