Thank you. No, thank you. No really, thank YOU.

Anthony Cummins at the Guardian books blog wonders whether acknowledgements (in novels, in particular) go too far. Do they?

On academic thank-yous, I’ve always liked this one from the “World’s Greatest Law Review Article” parody:

(this is the first footnote)

*Professor of Law, University of Arkansas at Little Rock. I would like to thank Lawrence Tribe, Sandra Day O’Connor, Richard (I like to call him “Rick”) Posner, Judge Lance Ito and a lot of other legal personalities with good name recognition. They didn’t have anything to do with this article, but there’s no law that says I can’t thank them just for being them in this important space for name-dropping. Special thanks to the editors of the Harvard Law Review for their hard work, unless they never bothered to read my submission, in which case I hope they spend eternity lost in a Sisyphean supra-infra citation loop. Finally, no introduction would be complete without thanking everyone for their “helpful comments,” including Lisa, the waitperson at Vino’s Bar in Little Rock, who suggested I move my laptop computer before someone dumped a pitcher of beer on it.