May 23, 2022 Diaries Diary, 1988 By Elif Batuman Last year, when my mother moved apartments, I came into possession of a largeish Prada box full of my childhood diaries. They go from 1981—I was four, and dictated the diary to my aunt—up to the nineties. I still haven’t read most of them. (I think it was a handbag, and not a small one, that originally came in that Prada box.) It is hard work to feel love for one’s childhood and adolescent self. Reading this entry, for example, I feel ashamed at my eleven-year-old self’s American imperialistic attitude towards my grandparents, who hadn’t heard of a planetarium before but “liked it very much.” It’s interesting that I then apparently felt I had to explain the concept of a planetarium for the benefit of people “a million years from now.” The whole entry gives me a “dutiful” feeling, when I read it now. I think I used to feel like I had to be writing all this stuff down, maintaining a chatty, “delightful” style, explaining every last thing down to the speech patterns of my fifth-grade science teacher, and appealing to some kind of “universal” reader who would understand it all and give each detail its proper value (although apparently this person also wouldn’t know what a planetarium was). What even is a childhood diary—for whom do we keep it? Elif Batuman’s first novel, The Idiot, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Its sequel, Either/Or, will be published on May 24.
May 16, 2022 Diaries Diary, 2019: Berkeley/Summit Hospital, Oakland By Joyce Carol Oates Photograph courtesy of Joyce Carol Oates. March 29, 2019 Berkeley/Summit Hospital (Oakland) It is not true that for all persons the essential question is: Shall I commit suicide? But it is true for the widow. The placating fantasy, that makes possible those countless hours of bedside vigil. The beloved husband is asleep, or, if awake, not so very aware of you as you would wish. You are forced to see, as in an ingenious torture, how, moment by moment, diminishing second by second, you are being erased from the beloved’s consciousness. When he looks at you without looking at you. For the widow there is one looming question: Should you outlive your husband? For Widows Who Have Considered Suicide When Surviving is Not Enough Read More
May 13, 2022 Diaries Diary, 2022 By Catherine Lacey From the afternoon of March 13 into the early hours of March 15, 2022— Journals are more a nervous habit for me than anything else. I tend to copy out passages of whatever I’m reading, less because that passage is particularly important and more as a way of taking a photograph of a time and place and line of thought. Read More
May 5, 2022 Diaries Diary, 2010 By Adam Levin In our Spring issue, we published selections from Annie Ernaux’s 1988 diaries, which chronicle the affair that served as the basis for her memoir Simple Passion. To mark the occasion, the Review has begun asking writers and artists for pages from their diaries, along with brief postscripts. Dear Levin, No one wants to hear about your parrot. Even your dreams are more interesting. Even the word you stammer in search of to get across the precise nature of the pain in your stomach. No one wants to hear about your novel-in-progress, either, not unless you can tell them you finished it, you sold it, or how much you sold it for. And yet they ask. About your novel-in-progreess. About your parrot. Why do they ask? You know not to speak of the novel-in-progress. You know not to speak of the bird. You know both equally. So why, Levin, capable as you are, successful as you are at not talking about your novel-in-progress—why can’t you just shut the fuck up about your parrot? Levin Read More