so the journal, from my point of view, is less than fully satisfying—because of what it does
not
say. It is very nearly drained of emotion. Clearly Tony had resolved to keep his private thoughts to himself, while conscientiously keeping a chronicle of events.
To be sure, as much can be said of Captain Joshua Slocum, whose memorable journal can be read as a grocery list, but which somehow achieves, in the annals of writing on the sea: literature. No one, this time out, sought to write about the trip or about the sea in the manner of Joseph Conrad. Van, in his writing, has always managed with almost spooky success to denature his own ebullient personality. One would not know from Van’s journal that he is among the half-dozen most consistently amusing and endearing men alive; only here and there a flash of this in the journal. I am reminded of a prodigious, heart-on-his-sleeve suitor of the mother of an old friend who, however, when he turned to correspondence could manage nothing—but nothing—that did not relate to the day’s weather, and invariably he closed his ardently motivated, romantically obsessed missives, “Yrs., Chas.”
Reggie resolves mightily to keep a journal—and doesn’t. He gets hopelessly behind, and then the dread day comes (after reaching our destination) when he faces the task of reconstruction. It is on the order of having done none of the reading during the entire semester of Russian literature 10A or 10B and finding, the evening before the exam, that all you need to do before morning is read the works of Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy. Since Reggie was born to be forgiven any transgression, he is promptly and unrecriminatingly forgiven when he turns up with a journal with a half-dozen technical sketches of sump pumps, speedometers, and chili con carne confections—and two or three notations. It pays, then, to force yourself to remember the number of lonely hours Reggie—the single companion who knows how to fix things—has spent poring over the technical literature of all the machines and devices that are out of order, while the dilettantes were attending merely their belletristic fancies.
Danny, who is conventionally restrained in his conversation about people, though not at all in his enthusiasm for events (the most beautiful sunset in the history of the world is whatever sunset Danny Merritt last saw), writes from the heart. The veil we all (or mostly all) wear during the day, drops: and Danny comes out with it, whether he is writing about the awfulness of a particular dish served at lunch or the uniqueness of his one true love. Dick Clurman, always the professional (though he is among the most sentimental of men, known by hosts on all seven continents as the most moving after-dinner panegyrist since Mark Antony), is characteristically methodical. He carries one of those little dictating machines and can be seen at odd hours of the afternoon talking into it. Eventually his secretary will transcribe it and it will be sent in. Trenchant, pointed, fluent, philosophical—and in this case a little vexed, because from the first moment on, having decided to participate only in the first leg of the journey, he felt a little bit the outsider, and so produced a journal psychologically encumbered by a sense of (self-effected) exclusion, like the hiker who signs up for the first third of the trip up Mount Everest.
My own journals are entirely hieroglyphic. Few people I know are as distressed as I by the physical labor of writing. I have on other occasions mentioned the wonderful gifts of the late William Snaith, who grabbed his logbook at the end of a day’s sail and wrote his heart out in thoughts expressive and humorous, illuminating and philosophical, voluptuous in their fecundity. One has visions of Anthony Trollope writing page after page after page, sheer pleasure etched in his face—perhaps smiling, even, as he wrote. My own journal is intensely abbreviated, but I have found it
not
say. It is very nearly drained of emotion. Clearly Tony had resolved to keep his private thoughts to himself, while conscientiously keeping a chronicle of events.
To be sure, as much can be said of Captain Joshua Slocum, whose memorable journal can be read as a grocery list, but which somehow achieves, in the annals of writing on the sea: literature. No one, this time out, sought to write about the trip or about the sea in the manner of Joseph Conrad. Van, in his writing, has always managed with almost spooky success to denature his own ebullient personality. One would not know from Van’s journal that he is among the half-dozen most consistently amusing and endearing men alive; only here and there a flash of this in the journal. I am reminded of a prodigious, heart-on-his-sleeve suitor of the mother of an old friend who, however, when he turned to correspondence could manage nothing—but nothing—that did not relate to the day’s weather, and invariably he closed his ardently motivated, romantically obsessed missives, “Yrs., Chas.”
Reggie resolves mightily to keep a journal—and doesn’t. He gets hopelessly behind, and then the dread day comes (after reaching our destination) when he faces the task of reconstruction. It is on the order of having done none of the reading during the entire semester of Russian literature 10A or 10B and finding, the evening before the exam, that all you need to do before morning is read the works of Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy. Since Reggie was born to be forgiven any transgression, he is promptly and unrecriminatingly forgiven when he turns up with a journal with a half-dozen technical sketches of sump pumps, speedometers, and chili con carne confections—and two or three notations. It pays, then, to force yourself to remember the number of lonely hours Reggie—the single companion who knows how to fix things—has spent poring over the technical literature of all the machines and devices that are out of order, while the dilettantes were attending merely their belletristic fancies.
Danny, who is conventionally restrained in his conversation about people, though not at all in his enthusiasm for events (the most beautiful sunset in the history of the world is whatever sunset Danny Merritt last saw), writes from the heart. The veil we all (or mostly all) wear during the day, drops: and Danny comes out with it, whether he is writing about the awfulness of a particular dish served at lunch or the uniqueness of his one true love. Dick Clurman, always the professional (though he is among the most sentimental of men, known by hosts on all seven continents as the most moving after-dinner panegyrist since Mark Antony), is characteristically methodical. He carries one of those little dictating machines and can be seen at odd hours of the afternoon talking into it. Eventually his secretary will transcribe it and it will be sent in. Trenchant, pointed, fluent, philosophical—and in this case a little vexed, because from the first moment on, having decided to participate only in the first leg of the journey, he felt a little bit the outsider, and so produced a journal psychologically encumbered by a sense of (self-effected) exclusion, like the hiker who signs up for the first third of the trip up Mount Everest.
My own journals are entirely hieroglyphic. Few people I know are as distressed as I by the physical labor of writing. I have on other occasions mentioned the wonderful gifts of the late William Snaith, who grabbed his logbook at the end of a day’s sail and wrote his heart out in thoughts expressive and humorous, illuminating and philosophical, voluptuous in their fecundity. One has visions of Anthony Trollope writing page after page after page, sheer pleasure etched in his face—perhaps smiling, even, as he wrote. My own journal is intensely abbreviated, but I have found it
Similar Books
