I loved reading your review! Your observations are very sharp and interesting. Loved this line: "More striking, and moving, is the alphabetically ordered, temporally disordered narration: ‘Grandma died. Grandma has been sick. Grandma is ailing still’. Death, after all, comes before life in the dictionary."
I loved reading your review! Your observations are very sharp and interesting. Loved this line: "More striking, and moving, is the alphabetically ordered, temporally disordered narration: ‘Grandma died. Grandma has been sick. Grandma is ailing still’. Death, after all, comes before life in the dictionary."
omg this is very cool! I love your review—I have a special affection for criticism that includes the critic's own experiences, and the way you moved from your own diaristic experiences to reviewing Heti's is very elegantly done.
The observation you make about encountering "near-replicas" of older thought patterns is also so, so relatable—maybe a universal experience for anyone who keeps a diary? Philip Lopate also notices this about his own; in one of the essays collected in A Year and a Day, he writes: "I’ve had the disconcerting experience of reading old diaries and coming upon the same insight repeated every decade or so, with no recognition that I’d already entertained that thought before."
I loved your review too, Loré! Especially your own experience of reviewing your journals, “revealing the specific patterns of being I’m seemingly doomed to”. I had this exact feeling yesterday parsing through my old entries, looking for clarity, but disappointed to find only more circularity.
I loved reading your review! Your observations are very sharp and interesting. Loved this line: "More striking, and moving, is the alphabetically ordered, temporally disordered narration: ‘Grandma died. Grandma has been sick. Grandma is ailing still’. Death, after all, comes before life in the dictionary."
Funny enough, I wrote a review of the book too: https://brooklynrail.org/2024/02/books/Sheila-Hetis-Alphabetical-Diaries. It's cool to be in conversation with each other across different publications. Congrats! <333
omg this is very cool! I love your review—I have a special affection for criticism that includes the critic's own experiences, and the way you moved from your own diaristic experiences to reviewing Heti's is very elegantly done.
The observation you make about encountering "near-replicas" of older thought patterns is also so, so relatable—maybe a universal experience for anyone who keeps a diary? Philip Lopate also notices this about his own; in one of the essays collected in A Year and a Day, he writes: "I’ve had the disconcerting experience of reading old diaries and coming upon the same insight repeated every decade or so, with no recognition that I’d already entertained that thought before."
Oooh, thanks for sharing that Lopate quote. This must be a universal experience which is sooo embarrassing for us all hahah.
I loved your review too, Loré! Especially your own experience of reviewing your journals, “revealing the specific patterns of being I’m seemingly doomed to”. I had this exact feeling yesterday parsing through my old entries, looking for clarity, but disappointed to find only more circularity.
Aw thank you so much!!