From my diary

On Jan­u­ary 1, 1955—I had just turned seventeen—and had pre­vi­ous­ly pur­chased a dai­ly ledger. On that New Year’s Day, I wrote this in the book: 

“Con­sid­er­ing that this is a very impor­tant year in my life … [high school] grad­u­a­tion … first year of college—I thought it would be a good idea to record these events. I write these words for myself … because I wish to clar­i­fy my own think­ing and idea. I would ven­ture to say that I am a con­fused per­son. Per­haps this will help. To begin …” 

Thus starts the only diary I have ever kept, and which I wrote in every day for that year. 

Per­haps, most notably is the entry for March 28, 1955.

“Well, I final­ly said it out loud—I intend to stay with the theater—in the the­ater one can be every­thing or any­body. That’s for me. I got a new idea for a play.” 

That was me announc­ing that I was going to be a writer. In those days, my writ­ing took the form of play­writ­ing. I would pur­sue that for many years, most­ly unsuc­cess­ful­ly. In my mid-twen­ties, an adult men­tor urged me to turn to nov­els, and soon after my chil­dren got me to children’s lit­er­a­ture. That said, Richard Jack­son, my prin­ci­pal edi­tor for years once said, “Avi, you have nev­er stopped writ­ing plays.” 

As for that diary, it is full of ener­gy and enthu­si­asm, with a great deal about read­ing and writ­ing, and the girls for whom I was seri­al­ly hav­ing unre­quit­ed crush­es. It is also replete with ado­les­cent absur­di­ties … “Read Pla­to. Not bad.” But it is full of intense self-dis­cov­ery. Not beside the point, there are long lists of the books I am read­ing, books that have noth­ing to do with my school. Thus: 

May 3—A Doll’s House. Ibsen. 

May 4—Ghosts. Ibsen. 

May 5—The Mind of a Man. Avi.

May 7—Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Dylan Thomas.

May 8—The Mas­ter Builder. Ibsen. 

May 11—The Seag­ull. Chekov. 

May 23—Shakespeare and the Rival Tra­di­tion. Harbage. 

May 18—Areopagitica. Milton. 

                Miss Julia. Strindberg. 

                 Cousin Bette. Balzac. 

 And so on.…

Did I real­ly read all that on May 18th?  (It was, after all, a Thurs­day, pre­sum­ably a school day.) I have to doubt it, but there they are. 

Note that on May 5, I insert some­thing I wrote, there­by embed­ding myself (ludi­crous­ly) into the world of great literature. 

The vol­ume is also full of quotes from what I am read­ing. Some examples: 

“I believe that hap­pi­ness wears out in [the] effort to recap­ture it; that noth­ing is more fatal to hap­pi­ness than the remem­brance of hap­pi­ness.”  (Gide)

“We want a few mad peo­ple now. See where the sane ones have land­ed us!”(G.B. Shaw)

“Lone­li­ness is the badge of the writer’s pro­fes­sion. It has ruined more writ­ers than any oth­er rea­son com­bined.” (Odets)

Here is my entry for one day, which records the fin­ish­ing of some­thing I had written: 

“Glo­ry be! Glo­ry be! Glo­ry be! It’s done. Poof. Gone over. Fin­ished. End­ed. Came home. Just did it. That’s all. Tomor­row one copy goes to Mary [school dra­ma teacher]. The oth­er to Lee [adult men­tor] who I shall see tomor­row. What next? I don’t know what I shall do with this. Two peo­ple have read it. Jack­ie [?] was the first. They made crit­i­cism which I don’t have with me now. I’ll save room here to put them in. Strange. Both did not feel it was slow. Good!” 

Oh, how young, how full of life! 

And now, years lat­er, back to the book with which I am cur­rent­ly struggling…