On the pleasure of reading private notebooks

Browsing through private notes feels more like participating in a happening than reading a piece of literature: this is what happened, more or less in real time, inside another human.

One reason I like this genre is that people censor themselves less when they are writing in private. I don’t mean that they are saying things that would get them ostracized in print (though that happens). I mean uncensored more generally: they allow their mind to be as it is on the page, however odd their thoughts are and however random the connect... See more

This is, I think, at the root of why I like reading private notes so much. There are so few places where we get to be close to other people and see the messy humanity they carry behind the identities they have polished for society life. There are so few places where we can apprentice ourselves to the unspeakable labors of thinking and feeling that ... See more