I've been doing some research into notebooks and the like. A friend of mine pointed me towards a Joan Didion essay, "On Keeping A Notebook," that appears in SlouchingTowards Bethlehem, a collection of her essays.
Written long ago, in the 1960s I think, the essay is still relevant. In fact, you could make an argument that in the world of blogging and Twitter, it's more relevant than ever.
Reading an arbitrary entry from her notebook, "that woman Estelle is partly the reason why George Sharp and I are separated today," Didion goes on to wonder:
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Recalling her failure to keep a keep a diary she touches on our ability to shape memories while we codify them.
But if the boredom of daily events doesn't matter, what does?
I think for Didion her notebook was an escape. She was "brought up in the ethic that others, any others, all others, (were) by definition more interesting than (her)." The notebook was an escape.
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In the end the deepest value of notebooks to her was not to remember the line but the memory, "I should remember the woman who said it and the afternoon I heard it." To reconnect with another iteration of herself.
Like so much of what I read, I'm new to Didion. Slouching Towards Bethlehem, her first work of non-fiction, is interesting throughout.
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