400 Boys and 50 More

AFTERWORD

One of the most famous techniques in film is the “dolly zoom” Alfred Hitchcock invented for use in Vertigo. At several key moments in the movie, while the camera pulls away from Jimmy Stewart, the lens zooms in. The angles skew, the mind boggles, the eponymous Vertigo ensues.

Reading back through all my short fiction, seeing it gathered in one place, moving through it quickly as I compose it in the frame of this book, I have frequently experienced a kind of “time zoom” vertigo. Apart from my writing, there’s not much else to cling to when I get dizzy. A story-obsessed lad of the Sixties, I find it suddenly fifty years later, and I’m still thinking of myself first and foremost as a writer, still wanting to be an always better one.

It’s what I’ve done. It’s what I do. I can’t see myself stopping.

My thanks to all those who have been with me along the way, sharing advice, encouragement, support. My editors, my teachers in school and out of it, my friends, my family.

And thanks especially to my readers.