diary = 'chronological memoir; personal chronicle'

[Jonathan Lighter]

Refer to our earlier discussion of the current use of _novel_.

JL

On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 8:31 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: diary = 'chronological memoir; personal chronicle'
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> If a diary should be contemporaneous and "memoir" is recently suspect
> due to endemic lack of truth, don't we need a new word?
>
> Joel
>
> At 10/18/2010 08:06 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >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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"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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