Studies in Twentieth-Century Diaries: The Concealed Self

Studies the diary as a metaphor of the continuous flow of time in a person's life, evoking the writer's often capricious and fragmentary recall of the past, and his daily attempt to transform memory into images that are appended as if they existed outside or beyond time. Contends that diaries supply the evidence that there is a need to engrave phrases and dates to "protect them from oblivion."