I’ve been reading Simone de Beauvoir’s Letters to Sartre, which is let’s say, not quite what I expected. In the introduction, it explains that after the publishing of Sartre’s letters, everyone asked Simone- hey, why don’t you publish your letters too so we can get the whole story? Â And she said that they were all lost during the war. They turned up later (obviously), but it’s unclear whether or not she was lying to keep them from being published, as they show a side that’s at odds with her public persona.
Anyways, it got me thinking about my journals, scrapbooks and correspondence. I’ve journaled all my life, and today I pooled them all together in one place for the first time in… ever. I’m going to try to slowly read my way through them. In keeping with my minimalism resolution, I’m thinking about purging, or maybe digitally archiving the more boring ones, but it’s so hard. I’ve deleted entire blogs many times, but this just feels so different. I guess I’m a book sentimentalist.Have you ever thrown away a journal or a diary?
