Imprisoned though he is in that wonderfully self-satisfied French tradition of announcing and defining, Derrida must none the less be said to be spot-on about diaries. He says in Of Grammatology: 'I can answer the threat of the other as other (than I) only by transforming it into another (than itself) through altering it in my imagination.' I recalled these oracular words when browsing in the Faber Book of Diaries, a gripping compilation, with several diary entries from different centuries for each day of the year. The effect of variety, and of uniformity, achieved by Simon Brett's use of this method, and by the breadth of his selecttion, is very striking.

LRB 4 June 1987 | PDF Download