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(2024.09 - 2024.12)
- by Changhai Lu -
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Earlier Posts <<<
September 4, 2024 # Boswell and Asimov on Diary
Scottish writer James Boswell was a diligent diarist and once claimed (in a diary entry in March 1776):
"I should live no more than I can record, as one should not have more corn growing than one can get in",
because "There is a waste of good if it be not preserved." Boswell's recording of life was a private one
(though eventually, more than 150 years later, his diary was published). As an interesting analogy,
Isaac Asimov shared Boswell's view but was much less private ‒ in fact compulsively public. In the preface
to The Early Asimov, the prolific American writer wrote, "Occasionally someone
asks me if I have never felt that my diary ought to record my innermost feelings and emotions, and my answer
is always, 'No. Never!' After all, what’s the point of being a writer if I have to waste my innermost
feelings and emotions on a mere diary?" Life was a waste to Boswell if it was not privately preserved,
and a waste to Asimov if it was not publicly preserved. :-)
September 13, 2024 # Boswell and Asimov's Use of Diary
As a consequence of the two types of "philosophy" of diaries Boswell and Asimov held, respectively, Asimov,
whose diary lacked "innermost feelings and emotions", never (at least to the best of my knowledge)
in his writings used his diary more than a mere record of dates and names for the events in his life. Boswell,
who lived no more than he could record, however, constantly drew content from his diary ‒ which he called
Journals ‒ and mingled it into his writings. English critic John Wain once commented in his introduction to
The Journals of James Boswell: 1762‒1795 that Boswell's
The Life of Samuel Johnson "suddenly bursts into glorious vitality with the
entry of Boswell himself into its pages in 1763", because this is the point "where the Journals effectively take over".
September 14, 2024 # Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Watched film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, partly because I enjoyed Jenna Ortega's
performance in the Netflix series Wednesday, and she was costumed similarly enough in the
preview of this film to renew my interest. Generally speaking, this is a nice and humorous Halloween-style film
in which there was one scene I particularly liked and felt touched by: When Astrid (played by Jenna Ortega)
and her mom met with her dad in the afterlife, and they sat and talked with genuine joy and smiles, regardless of the horrible
look her dad retained, which reflected his death. It was a scene simple and natural, as if it was at an ordinary coffee
shop, and yet it deeply demonstrated what a family is.
>>> Later Posts
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