Unsurprisingly, every so often readers have an occasion to ask: Just how in the hell did stuff that occurred back in, say, 1964 get into an act-by-act, word-for-word account?
Is there a flavor of doubt in some such questions? Yes there is. And there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be.
The answer to such queries issues rightly from a centuries-old habit of writers of all species: journal keeping. The first such practitioner that usually snaps into the minds of English speakers is James Boswell and his subject. That of course would be Dr. Samuel Johnson, England’s great intellectual. Johnson is known worldwide for his work of nine years, “A Dictionary of the English Language,” 1755, often called “one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship.”
Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson” – “the most famous single work of biographic art in the whole of literature” – is a superb product of the “scrupulous fidelity” of his vigorous journal-keeping.
Yet the literary oath of “Nulla dies sine linea” – “Not a day without a line” – has to be applied with care or the result will become the work of a diarist. And the intrusive apprehension that produces the accompanying wounding censorship: What if someone else reads this? That has lead many a talented writer into a “cipher-ship,” which is really a kind of “eraser-ship.” Or reaching farther into their genius, such as the great devoted English diarist (and member of Parliament) Samuel Pepys. A genius diarist who was became a genius “cipherist,” in the hope of attaining a certain amount of marital peace and quiet.
He was a deliberate diarist of great care for he was a deliberate, active womanizer. Thus he wrote in a garbled shorthand so his work could not easily be read by meddlers. His passion deserves a special language, thus he resorts to a private code involving words based on Spanish, French and Italian roots.
It is instructive to note that Da Vinci, also seeking privacy, used mirror writing. Both of these tools of disguise necessary, for it’s often true that undisciplined diary writing often leads, then and now, to passages that can result in disaster. Both ancient private reports and “modern” media also can offer a plethora of ways to lure those sporting a prying impulse into making false – and disruptive – accusations.
Until the relatively near past, those who yielded to an unrelenting probing spirit that meant for many writers acquiring bulking appurtenances such as hefty lockable filing cabinets.
Here, a brief pause is useful to identify the difference between “Journal Keeping” from “Diary Keeping.” Two terms so promiscuously used by so-called “sound sources” that they are of little use. Because of the long-standing use of the word “journal” (note: ‘diarists’ is not used) by the media to identify those who gather, organize and disseminate soundly researched information, the word journal is used to identify such work. This is reenforced by centuries of professionally used titles to identify such information: “The British Medical Journal,” “The Wall Street Journal,” etc.
The answer to how detailed encounters of 1964 usefully landed in a report published in 2015 is similarly simple. “Old” material proves its instructiveness regarding Mexico, Mexicans and North Americans simply by being stubbornly preserved. (Many people divide journalism from diary-keeping.) Two good-sized, crammed, wooden book shelves contain a combination of books and much-used folder files in the studio. More of this informative mixture of information rise in floor-to-ceiling, well-carpentered wooden shelves that also stand watch in the studio.
In the crowded bodega next door reside eight tall metal filing cabinets bearing mostly old – but some relatively recent – recorded challenges, successes, defeats and deaths of Mexican acquaintances, long-time close friends, compadres and (comrades), fools and rip-off enemies. Some of these agglomerations display shredded mice-nibbled, water-stained, age-yellowed, decayed pages. Tens of thousands of scribbled-on, field-wounded pages. Many of them fattened by clipped-on clots of notes.
I began when fairly young sprouting a porcupine’s load of pens and pencils, crowded around bunches of notebooks of random sizes. I looked at times as if I believed I needed to be ready to turn into a stenographer at any moment. But the real problem was that while I was learning a lot about Mexico, I wasn’t satisfied with my progress in writing about it. Mexico was a becoming culture, populated with a handsome, friendly people – not counting the loathsome politicos, and corrupt quicos. But it had an edge to it. The poverty and the rough treatment of the scarred, unquelled poor. Thus the refreshing stacks of informative evidence of generations of grit. A calloused persistence that calls for admiration.