Lark and Termite (29 page)

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony for the gifts of time and space in which this book was written. Thanks to the Howard Foundation for crucial support. Thanks also to Ann Close, my generous editor at Knopf, to Lynn Nesbit, my agent and friend of many years, and to Tom Jenks, Jo Ann Beard, Mark Stockman, Ivy Goodman, Pamela Rikkers, and Jill McCorkle, who read early drafts. Thanks to artist Mary Sherman, whose long-ago gift of a drawing of Termite became his image. Thanks to traveler and author Robert Nilsen
(Moon Handbooks: South Korea),
who sent geographic details and present-day photographs of the tunnel at No Gun Ri; to Suki Kim and to Suji Kwock Kim, who advised on Korean words and phrases; to Colonel Jeffrey J. Douglass, U.S. Marine Corps Historical Division, who corresponded regarding KMAG and Task Force Smith; to the late David Halberstam, who offered advice and counsel on the Korean conflict; and to Sang-Hun Choe, Charles J. Hanley, and Martha Mendoza of the Associated Press, who broke the story of No Gun Ri.

Portions of this book appeared in slightly different form in the following publications: “Termite’s Birthday, 1959” in
Granta;
“Termite, 1959” in
Southern Review;
“Nonie’s Words” in nerve.com; “The Bad Thing” in
Ploughshares;
“Termite Makes the Shape” in
Murdaland;
“Language Immersion Seoul” in
Narrative Magazine;
“Solly and Lark” in
Granta 100;
“Leavitt’s Dream” in
Conjunctions;
“Nonie Talks About Lola” in
Appalachian Heritage.
“Termite’s Birthday, 1959” was included, with permission of
Granta
and Alfred A. Knopf, in
Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs,
ed. Suzanne Kamata, Beacon Press, 2008.

A Note About the Author

Jayne Anne Phillips is the author of three previous novels,
MotherKind
(2000),
Shelter
(1994), and
Machine Dreams
(1984), and two widely anthologized collections of stories,
Fast Lanes
(1987) and
Black Tickets
(1979). Her works have been translated and published in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Hebrew, Greek, Danish, and Dutch. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Bunting Fellowship from the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, a National Book Critics Circle Award nomination, and an Orange Prize nomination. She was awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize (1980) and an Academy Award in Literature (1997) by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work has appeared most recently in
Harper’s, Granta, The Southern Review,
and the
Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction.
She has taught at Harvard University, Williams College, Boston University, and Brandeis University. She is currently Professor of English and Director of the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark, the State University of New Jersey. Information, essays, and text source photographs can be viewed at www.jayneannephillips.com.

A Note on the Type

This book was set in Adobe Garamond. Designed for the Adobe Corporation by Robert Slimbach, the fonts are based on types first cut by Claude Garamond (c. 1480–1561). Garamond was a pupil of Geoffroy Tory and is believed to have followed the Venetian models, although he introduced a number of important differences, and it is to him that we owe the letter we now know as “old style. ” He gave to his letters a certain elegance and feeling of movement that won their creator an immediate reputation and the patronage of Francis I of France.

Composed by North Market Street Graphics,

Allentown, Pennsylvania

Printed and bound by R.R. Donnelley & Sons,

Harrisonburg, Virginia

Designed by Anthea Lingeman

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2009 by Jayne Anne Phillips

All rights reserved.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Phillips, Jayne Anne, 1952–

  Lark and Termite : a novel / by Jayne Anne Phillips.—ist ed.
    p. cm.
  eISBN: 978-0-307-27127-3
1. West Virginia—Fiction. 2. Nineteen fifties–Fiction. 3. Korean War,
1950-1953—Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.H479L37 2007
813'.54—dc22      2008033453

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