Diary
Story Stream
On Helen Garner’s Diaries March 04, 2025
What secret desires and resentments are tucked inside the people we love? A little girl’s diary, with its tiny lock and key, testifies to the impulse to keep parts of ourselves hidden, but it’s impossible to look at a locked diary without imagining b...
A Rose Diary August 29, 2024
April 12, 2024I live on a mountain and am surrounded by mountains and last year I planted five rosebushes. Last year I dug five holes and it took a few days because the ground is hard where I live and it is full of bluestone and other rocks. In the o...
The Evolution of the Diary July 24, 2024
John Dickerson: Is there a storyline about how you get from the first place that a person can write down their innermost thoughts to what we conceive of as journals and diaries now, which are more the location for our personal exploration? How do you...
How Gmail Became Our Diary April 26, 2024
Twenty years ago this month, Google launched Gmail. At first, user numbers were deliberately kept low, and those with access would hoard invitations and bestow them on friends like precious gifts. Once you were on the inside, though, a whole new worl...
For Every Novelist, an Alt April 12, 2024
I was never one for diaries. In middle school, I tried keeping one for a while; it soon became a long list of girls I hated. Very quickly my mother found it and read it. She summoned me to her room one afternoon to review it with her. “Don’t say hate...
The Great American Speculator April 11, 2024
Emerson is a difficult subject for a biography; on one hand, a biographer must compete with his journals. And because some of Emerson's most famous and important essays were in the mode of biography–the strange and wonderful “Representative Men” seri...
On Sheila Heti’s “Alphabetical Diaries” April 04, 2024
CY TWOMBLY, the American abstract expressionist, is best known for his graffiti-like paintings scrawled in large loops. He is less known for his photography, although it may reveal more of his perspective than his painting does. Cabbages, carnations,...
Is There a Widening Rift Between Men and Women? April 03, 2024
It has been suggested recently that men and women are drifting apart. Women are said to be more likely to lean left and to reject traditional ideas of (heterosexual) male-female relationships than men are. Men, on the other hand, are allegedly dissat...
Sheila Heti Scrambles Her Life in 'Alphabetical Diaries' February 13, 2024
I was about thirteen when I read my little sister’s diary. I barely had to flip two pages to see: “Ariella is a bitch!! I hope I never hit puberty.” I confronted her and was swiftly, justly punished for invading my sister’s privacy. It’s a story I’ve...
Helen Garner’s Alienating Domesticity February 13, 2024
The houses were full of what she described as “disciplined hippies.” There were single mothers with small kids, cooperative men, and boyfriends who’d overstayed their welcome. The tasks were divvied up equally. In the summertime, they would bundle up...
Sheila Heti Was Wasting Her Time February 07, 2024
“A writer has to follow their curiosity, first and foremost,” writes Sheila Heti in the opening chapter of her nifty and singular new book, Alphabetical Diaries. “A writer is just one person under the stars,” begins the subsequent sentence, “one pers...
