diary = 'chronological memoir; personal chronicle'

[Jonathan Lighter]

Perhaps the inspiration was Richard Tregaskis's bestselling _Guadalcanal
Diary_ (1943) which, though pretty clearly polished for publication, at
least resembles an actual diary:"Today I did such and such."

IIRC, the movie (1944) has no pretensions to "diary" form.

JL

On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 8:06 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      diary = 'chronological memoir; personal chronicle'
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Perhaps some tweaking of the definition is in order, but this is another
> one
> of those more or less intentionally misleading commercial terms that are
> becoming accepted as normal. At least in the world of commerce.
>
> 1978  Richard M. McMurray in _Journal of Southern History_ XLIV (Aug.)
> 470: _Soldiering: The Civil War Diary of Rice C. Bull._...Edited by K. Jack
> Bauer....The propriety of calling this work a "diary" must be questioned.
> Although Bull clearly based what he wrote in 1913 on his wartime journal,
> the fact is that the published version was taken from a typescript written
> in 1913. Bauer does not inform the reader...if the original diary is
> extant.
>
> I have seen more recent exx., esp. in the Vietnam War memoir genre, though
> I
> can't call them to mind at the moment. If such works differ from ordinary
> memoirs in any way, it is solely because they appear to be scrupulous about
> the precise dates of events.
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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