Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

I count myself fortunate in having on hand most of the hardcover volumes of the definitive University of California edition of the Diary of Samuel Pepys. (I still need to buy or borrow VII and VIII.) The principal editors, Robert Latham and William Matthews, wrote an erudite and moving series of introductions in Volume I, about the context of the diary: the man behind it, the complex history of the times, and the diary as a work of literature. Reading these fascinating introductions consumed most of yesterday evening (my knowledge of English history during this turbulent period is mighty shaky and needs significant shoring up), but I did also manage to sally forth into the beginning of the diary itself. And was immediately reminded why I love reading diaries so much. They illustrate an eternal and immediate present. They are only about the day-to-day, whatever that entails for a particular person. They do not differentiate between the mundane and the important. All is important, all is literally noteworthy, to the diarist, in a free-floating now. The editors sum up:

Robert Latham: "...the origins of so deeply personal a document must themselves be personal.... The diary is a by-product of his energetic pursuit of happiness.... He was by nature a man of system, and one to whom the keeping of records was necessary to the art of living." (p.xxviii)

William Matthews: "Diaries are not novels; they are bound to reality, with its deplorable habit of providing excellent story situations and no artistically satisfactory ends." (p.cxi)

There is a beginning here, of sorts - on page one we are pitched headlong into the scenes of a grown man's daily life. In the first twenty-five pages of the Diary, Pepys checks in at the office, records his penury, eats a sack-posset and a turkey pie, hears news of a fatal duel, visits a friend with "swine-pox," plays cards, takes physic for his cold, gossips with friends about Parliamentary politics, hears some sermons, finds out his wife is not pregnant after all, mentions the burial of a young bookseller. January 1660, London, come to life. It could almost be now. Except it isn't - instead it is now, then. Books can be such mysterious time machines. One reason why we read on, I suppose.

Despite the gray rainy scene out my window this morning, I am filled with optimism for this winter reading project.