Johnson merely records in his diary, "On Good Friday I took in the afternoon some coffee and buttered bun." Macaulay tells us, "He has gravely noted down that he once committed the sin of drinking coffee on Good Friday."
These were all hilarious, but this was the one that made me laugh out loud :D
Yes, one thing I've learned from salon and checking out various letters and memoirs is that it's rather hard to write memoirs or journals that are -- well, it's like when you were talking recently about that sort of interest and ability to write interestingly of everything that's going on around you, and other people, and not about yourself (or at least not just about yourself). It's one of those things that I think seems like it should be trivially easy to do, and yet it's pretty rare to actually be able to do it.
I've been reading memoirs, diaries and letters since a few decades, and that's indeed one of the recurring red threads. Whether or not a memoir is interesting is not always related whether person writing it is fascinating. Observational skills and writing ability trump that any time. (My most startling example of this was when I read Marlene Dietrich's memoirs. Which were incredibly dull. Which Marlene Dietrich really really wasn't. Nor does she come across thusly in anyone else's book, whether contemporary to her or written after the fact. And good lord, did she lead an interesting life and met interesting people. But the memoirs? Eh.
That is indeed shocking to me that they would be boring!
(But Richard Burton's aren't boring, from the excerpts you gave us! Though that also proves your point, because it's fascinating how he tells the stories and observes them more so than the actual facts of the stories, though those are also fascinating!)
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Re: Macaulay - Miscellanea
These were all hilarious, but this was the one that made me laugh out loud :D
Yes, one thing I've learned from salon and checking out various letters and memoirs is that it's rather hard to write memoirs or journals that are -- well, it's like when you were talking recently about that sort of interest and ability to write interestingly of everything that's going on around you, and other people, and not about yourself (or at least not just about yourself). It's one of those things that I think seems like it should be trivially easy to do, and yet it's pretty rare to actually be able to do it.
Re: Macaulay - Miscellanea
I've been reading memoirs, diaries and letters since a few decades, and that's indeed one of the recurring red threads. Whether or not a memoir is interesting is not always related whether person writing it is fascinating. Observational skills and writing ability trump that any time. (My most startling example of this was when I read Marlene Dietrich's memoirs. Which were incredibly dull. Which Marlene Dietrich really really wasn't. Nor does she come across thusly in anyone else's book, whether contemporary to her or written after the fact. And good lord, did she lead an interesting life and met interesting people. But the memoirs? Eh.
Re: Macaulay - Miscellanea
(But Richard Burton's aren't boring, from the excerpts you gave us! Though that also proves your point, because it's fascinating how he tells the stories and observes them more so than the actual facts of the stories, though those are also fascinating!)