From Evan Lavender-Smith's From Old Notebooks:
Some writers avoid writing about themselves at all costs. And we say to ourselves of such a writer, He is thinking only about himself!
The book has nothing to do with the author's life, but only with the author's life in the book, that is to say, with the reader's life.
No matter what I'm reading now, I misread it in order to make it apply to From Old Notebooks.
From Old Notebooks might best be termed a documentary. I am aware of the book in much the same way as the subject of the documentary is, in cinema, the camera.
It is true that F.O.N. is written by at least as many authors as it has entries--and none of them is me. This is why I will never be able to speak for the book. Because the I who would speak for it is not among those who wrote it.
Must the artifice of the book be increased in order for the book to end?
The genre of the book--poetry, fiction, nonfiction, philosophy--might largely depend on the reader's mood.
Is my family life opposed to my writing life? I should finally suck it up and say, This is my life. Just as I am coming to know my family through my writing, so too my writing through my family; I must remember I am writing through my family, familying through my writing.
This is my life.