“Journal entries, those vessels of discontent, are notoriously fickle, subject to the torque of mutable feelings; without caution, speculation falls into usurpation.” — Cynthia Ozick
I’ve kept a journal for more than 22 years. It’s mostly electronic, tip-tapped on my computer, though I’ve printed out hundreds of pages from the first decade or so and bound them in a plastic spiral binder, as if I wrote a book. It’s quite fat.
A big hunk of my journals, bound.
(This word barrage, incidentally, doesn’t include the stacks of Moleskin notebooks deliriously filled during my extensive world travels.)
What I write in the journal is hardly revolutionary. I report, remember, ruminate, philosophize, complain, yearn, whine and woolgather — all that human stuff. Most likely it is ravenously narcissistic, disgustingly self-obsessed, irretrievably solipsistic. (And how.)
Some of it’s pretty juicy, even naughty, but I’m careful not to get too personal about others. For one, I’m not comfortable anatomizing friends and family; second, I wouldn’t want to injure feelings of someone who pried where they weren’t supposed to. (Once, someone did pry where they weren’t supposed to. A romance that was in its death throes was instantly snuffed.)
It wants badly to be literary, more narrative than journalistic, even occasionally novelistic, lyrical, with cartwheels and curlicues. This means a lot of it is dreadful. Perhaps what I’m aiming for is the memoir-y fictions of writers like Ben Lerner (the astounding, erudite “10:04”), Karl Ove Knausgård (the granular, un-put-downable “My Struggle” series), Teju Cole (“Open City,” a minor masterpiece), and Eve Babitz (“Eve’s Hollywood,” a delicious, decadent Didion), paragons of the form, of living, breathing autobiographical novels.
And then there’s one of the Platonic ideals, Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from Underground,” the first half of which is the faux-memoir of a blustering, philosophical nihilist, spittle flying with frothing apoplexy. It’s nuts, pure sulfurous id.
And, three attempts in, I still can’t surrender to this undisputed (until now) classic novel. Despite its machine-gun stream-of-consciousness, “Notes” is a grinding slog. The book rushes headily but incoherently, a corrosive rant by its nameless protagonist that loops-the-loops, caroms, careers and pinballs. Zesty, it’s also strangely insipid. I don’t know what the character is on about most of the time, but there’s a zing and energy propelling his transgressive thoughts.
About putting it down, yet again, I am conflicted, though I am mostly just bored, and that — boredom by a work of art — is unforgivable. I persevere for my friend Sativa’s sake. “Muscle through,” she, a fan of the book, tells me. But I can’t.
Still, I wish my journals were as combustible, as gnarly and smart. Sylvia Plath’s published journals, so frank and vivid, have inspired me, told me how to limn a banal day, galvanize a simple gesture. Lerner, infusing the quotidian with ballistic intelligence — he’s something else. (I’ve twice read “10:04.”) I return to my bloated journal, its thirsty computer pages, recording the day, feelings, longings, and do what I can, all the while hoping for something approaching, or just faintly grazing, art. Ha.
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