I really enjoyed the selection and arrangement of diary excerpts in New York Diaries: 1609-2009 (Modern Library, 2012). Read my post on the book here. I particularly like how the segments capture the environment of New York depending on the period: the colonists’ arrival, the boom and squalor of the nineteenth century, the sparkle and click of beads in the 1920s, the living off of Chinese in a paper box in a dark room vibe, of , well, pretty much any period of New York history.
I moved into New York City proper in 2005, and while my journalling habits have given way to blogging, research writing, and fiction, I was curious to see how my own New York entries held up against those selected for the text. In comparison, I wondered at the volume of diaries created today. Do people write for themselves as much? Or have they replaced it with lesser notions of privacy and revealing all to others online? What is Facebook but one lengthy diary, with commentary? In perusing my own journals, I find a lot about the routines of my life, and less of the texture of the city. It’s as soon as I got here, there was too much life here to write about. Alas. I’ll see if they look any better 25 years from now. Here are a few excerpts:
Photo: Tookapic [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
2 January 2006: MOMA in the rain, with some party evidently occurring. Gave a foreigner the wrong directions to Penn Station. Well, he’ll be closer than he would have been.
8 April 2006: On the M15 Limited. Two nearby hipsters remarking how the Limited is “hot” and like a “stretch Hummer.”
13 October 2011: I found the NYPL menu transcribing project. What struck me first was the explosion of menus in their collection from around 1900, and how they all basically have the same thing on them (not necessarily true, but “Cold Meats.” rang a bell for me as a short story title). It is everywhere. I love how you order pickles and relishes separately, 10c. Breakfast wines upon request.
14 October 2011: 1pm. Goofy trip to D’agastinos, where we were accosted by a scammer with a Planned Parentood shirt on, only to ask for a credit card number on the street. More Roth, more Food and Wine, poking at newspaper ads, watching [Star Trek] Voyager and eating mushroom soup. It will be too soupy for hiking tomorrow, and I have a terrible time trying to chill out.
As a communications student in the final semester of my masters program I think your questions about Facebook are fascinating. We were actually talking about the concept of privacy online as opposed to off in my media ethics class. I would guess the number of diaries have declined as people tell their story online on social media sites like Facebook. I think people have totally given up the idea of privacy online in order to impress their “friends” who they may not even know in real life. I think facebook has made people a bit narcassistic always having to feel like they have to one-up their friends with a crazier party photo or photo’s from a trip to faraway tropical paradise. Peer pressure is also a huge factor here because people young and old feel like they are “out of the loop” if they do not use facebook. There is also the “creeper” side to facebook where one can always know what people are up to, where they are. Also the ability to search online for people you see at work or in school is as easy as searching for George Washington on Google. I guess in a way you could say Facebook is like your big diary that is always open for friends, FUTURE EMPLOYERS. “which seems to escape the minds of many people my age”, and marketers for that matter, to look at. It’s important to remember that marketer part. Unlike your personal diary, Facebook is there for advertisers to make money off of your “likes” and in turn to hopefully get you and your friends to buy something too.
During a grad assistanship last year I worked closely with my college’s archivist to create a website about the histories of all the buildings on campus. We found out a lot of interesting stuff about the people who used to live and work in these buildings through primary sources like old student newspapers, deeds, yearbooks, and even smaller things like invitations given to balls that used to held at the college when it was women’s only school.
I wonder if 100 years from now archivists will use facebook and blogs as “primary source” to peer back into our lives.
Yes, blogs are already being used as a primary source. In New York Diaries, Carpenter did include blogs as a voice from 9/11 and from the 2000s. The difference is the audience for a diary is private, unlike a blog (concepts of what should be private certainly have changed!). I would think that a blog and a diary have intrinsically different goals, though the lines have blurred.