A literary tour through the notable diaries of history, giving us a window into the private lives of the famous and infamous, with a new introduction by the author
Before the age of social media, chronicling one’s life was a private matter. In this literary tour through the notable diaries of history, Thomas Mallon is a witty guide to the personal journals of the famous and infamous, bringing to life their neuroses, artistic practices, and preoccupations. Virginia Woolf casts her sharp eye on friends and acquaintances. Samuel Pepys chronicles political life in Restoration England. Sylvia Plath’s notebooks are filled with images she will turn into poems. F. Scott Fitzgerald records overheard conversation while Leonardo da Vinci scribbles down his dreams. Anaïs Nin treats her diary as a tell-all, reflecting on love, sex, and death across several volumes and decades.
In A Book of One’s Own, Mallon is a sympathetic, stylish, and insightful companion, transporting us across eras and continents with infectious joie de vivre. Here is a profound and compelling case for the diary as the quintessential literary art form, an act of defiance against being forgotten, and a stab at immortality.
“Charming, diverting, and exceptionally intelligent.” —The New Yorker
“A marvelous book. . . . An engaging meditation on the varied and irrepressible spirit of life that insists upon preserving itself on paper.” —Los Angeles Times
“A highly original, witty, new literary species—an anthology of diaries told mainly in the anthologist’s own words.” —Mary McCarthy
“Entrants in this dense and unprecedented volume range from the heroic to the villainous, from Albert Camus to Lee Harvey Oswald. Mallon welcomes them all to his vast storehouse. The disclosures, the introspections and secret desires give diaries their special appeal. This assemblage compounds the interest; reading it is like screening other people’s dreams—at once intriguing and familiar.” —TIME
“Mallon is the best kind of literary critic, one who seemingly has read everything and retained a feverish and communicable enthusiasm for the best of what he has read. A Book of One’s Own adds dozens of titles to that long list of books one must read now. If one feels grateful to Mallon for the books he makes us wish to read, there is gratitude, too, for the books he has read for us, for all the bits and pieces he has assembled with wit and intelligence into a kind of commonplace book that’s anything but commonplace.” —USA Today
“This is more than a book about diaries: it’s a celebration of life and the many ways people have of savoring it. Mallon is a dazzling, inventive, witty, unfailingly enjoyable writer—one of the finest prose stylists at work in America today.” —Phyllis Rose
THOMAS MALLON is the author of twelve novels, including Henry and Clara, Dewey Defeats Truman, Fellow Travelers, Watergate, Landfall, and Up With the Sun. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, and other publications. In 2011 he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award for prose style. He has been the literary editor of GQ and the deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lives in Washington, D.C.
A literary tour through the notable diaries of history, giving us a window into the private lives of the famous and infamous, with a new introduction by the author
Before the age of social media, chronicling one’s life was a private matter. In this literary tour through the notable diaries of history, Thomas Mallon is a witty guide to the personal journals of the famous and infamous, bringing to life their neuroses, artistic practices, and preoccupations. Virginia Woolf casts her sharp eye on friends and acquaintances. Samuel Pepys chronicles political life in Restoration England. Sylvia Plath’s notebooks are filled with images she will turn into poems. F. Scott Fitzgerald records overheard conversation while Leonardo da Vinci scribbles down his dreams. Anaïs Nin treats her diary as a tell-all, reflecting on love, sex, and death across several volumes and decades.
In A Book of One’s Own, Mallon is a sympathetic, stylish, and insightful companion, transporting us across eras and continents with infectious joie de vivre. Here is a profound and compelling case for the diary as the quintessential literary art form, an act of defiance against being forgotten, and a stab at immortality.
Reviews
“Charming, diverting, and exceptionally intelligent.” —The New Yorker
“A marvelous book. . . . An engaging meditation on the varied and irrepressible spirit of life that insists upon preserving itself on paper.” —Los Angeles Times
“A highly original, witty, new literary species—an anthology of diaries told mainly in the anthologist’s own words.” —Mary McCarthy
“Entrants in this dense and unprecedented volume range from the heroic to the villainous, from Albert Camus to Lee Harvey Oswald. Mallon welcomes them all to his vast storehouse. The disclosures, the introspections and secret desires give diaries their special appeal. This assemblage compounds the interest; reading it is like screening other people’s dreams—at once intriguing and familiar.” —TIME
“Mallon is the best kind of literary critic, one who seemingly has read everything and retained a feverish and communicable enthusiasm for the best of what he has read. A Book of One’s Own adds dozens of titles to that long list of books one must read now. If one feels grateful to Mallon for the books he makes us wish to read, there is gratitude, too, for the books he has read for us, for all the bits and pieces he has assembled with wit and intelligence into a kind of commonplace book that’s anything but commonplace.” —USA Today
“This is more than a book about diaries: it’s a celebration of life and the many ways people have of savoring it. Mallon is a dazzling, inventive, witty, unfailingly enjoyable writer—one of the finest prose stylists at work in America today.” —Phyllis Rose
THOMAS MALLON is the author of twelve novels, including Henry and Clara, Dewey Defeats Truman, Fellow Travelers, Watergate, Landfall, and Up With the Sun. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, and other publications. In 2011 he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award for prose style. He has been the literary editor of GQ and the deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lives in Washington, D.C.
