Just read this in the Guardian. DFW is one of my favourite writers, and I was really upset when he died. These archives that get put together when a writer dies leave me strangely unmoved. I guess I'd like to flick through a notebook, but I'd feel a bit guilty doing so. I certainly wouldn't want to pore over the lot for hours. I once saw a notebook of James Joyce's with part of the original, handwritten draft of Ulysses in it. That was exciting because it was the actual text - the most important bit - and it was in his wild, scrawled handwriting. I'm not sure I'd want to see the nuts and bolts and ideas and techniques and plans behind a writer's work, at least not masses of them. It'd sort of ruin the surface tension that gives a book its magic.
Also, without suggesting that anyone would ever be interested in my notebooks, there's no way I'd want them displayed anywhere, or read by a single other person. My notes and plans are interspersed with reminders, notes to self, lists of excruciatingly personal/ embarrassing concerns etc etc. Do these writers write notes with a view to them being looked over, or am I just unusually weird?
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