The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (25 page)

A few notes on the text,
plus grateful acknowledgments

I am indebted to a number of books for my ideas about boarding school, boys clubs, pranks, interventionist art, urban exploration, and so on. In particular, I made use of:
Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon
by Chuck Palahnuik;
The Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life
edited by Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette;
Preparing for Power: America’s Elite Boarding Schools
by Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Caroline Hodges Persell;

If at All Possible, Involve a Cow: The Book of College Pranks
by Neil Steinberg;
Prank University: The Ultimate Guide to College’s Greatest Tradition
by John Austin;
The Code of the Woosters
and the Drones Club stories by P. G. Wodehouse;
Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh; and
The Suicide Club
, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

I did research at Web sites such as santarchy.com, museumofhoaxes.com, actionsquad.org, la.cacophony.org, bridesofmarch.org, and numerous others devoted to urban exploration or college pranks.

The material in Frankie’s Suicide Club/Cacophony Society paper is factual, as is the material on the panopticon, the theoretical interpretation of which comes very loosely from
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
by Michel Foucault. The theft of the Guppy is based on the 1933 theft of the Sacred Cod of Massachusetts, which was stolen by students from Harvard. It is one of the most famous college pranks of all time. All errors regarding these crazy subjects are my own.

The information about secret societies is completely imaginary—and probably false.

The basset hound of vegetables was inspired by my friend Paul Zelinsky, who once made a Rapunzel out of cheese.

Thank you to Donna Bray for her great leniency and editorial acumen. And for her faith that I would write something decent from a proposal that was nothing more than two paragraphs of silliness. Everyone at Hyperion has been wonderfully supportive and creative, in particular Emily Schultz, Elizabeth Clark, Jennifer Zatorski, Scottie Bowditch, and Angus Killick. My agent, Elizabeth Kaplan, is indispensable. I am so grateful for her help.

Thank you to Ben Fine for his boarding school stories, and to my friends from college who threw late-night parties on the Vassar golf course. My husband let me steal some of his jokes and read an early draft.

Justine Larbalestier, Maryrose Wood, Lauren Myracle, and Sarah Mlynowski kibbitzed on my author picture so much it felt like we were having a pajama party, and then they made me go back and have a new one taken wearing makeup—thank you, all. Heather Weston (heatherweston.com) took endless photos and charged me only an eighth of what they are worth.

Sarah Mlynowski read a draft when this book was in terrible, half-finished form and helped me immensely. Much appreciation also to the members of my YA Novelists newsgroup for weighing in on the title and in general for their support. Thank you to my writing companions, Scott Westerfeld, Maureen Johnson, and John Green, for keeping me from being lonely during revisions and for answering tedious questions such as “What is the little show in Ms. Pac-Man called, you know, the thing that happens after you’ve completed two thingees?” (intermission between levels) or “What is that band you listen to when you’re really depressed?” (The Smiths)— whenever I asked.