A literary feast

Today we learned of the latest triumph in the world of letters.

 

LOS ANGELES - Anna Nicole Smith's private thoughts written in two diaries have been sold for more than $500,000 to a German businessman ...

The late Playboy model's handwritten 1992 diary was sold for $282,500 and her 1994 diary went for $230,000 in an eBay auction Thursday, plus a 20 percent buyer's premium.

Her 1992 diary consists of 26 entries from January to August while the 1994 one contains about 30 pages from January to July, Riccio said. The entries show a moody and complicated woman ...

Among the entries was Smith discussing her husband, elderly Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, whom she married in 1994 and who died the next year.

"It was a okay day," she wrote of June 11, 1992. "I had lunch with Howard. Someone ran over my cat yesterday. I was real sad."

In a 1994 entry, she wrote about his illness. "My husbands very weak. Theres nothing I can do," she wrote. "I want each hour to comfort him with medicines and prayers."

Even on the basis of these brief excerpts, the two slim volumes do indeed promise a stimulating reading experience about "a moody and complicated woman."

Take June 11. One minute it's "a okay day," and the next minute Smith is mourning her cherished cat. ("I was real sad.") Rarely in modern literature do we confront such stark mood swings and such a richly textured inner life.

Consider also the author's Hemingwayesque simplicity of language: "Someone ran over my cat yesterday." Have six words ever said so much?

Yet Smith also reveals her Joycian side, as she plays with words, grammar, and punctuation, creating a new syntax rife with double meanings: "My husbands very weak." The artfully omitted apostrophe raises the question: one husband, or two? Does the implied duality suggest a dichotomy of loyalties? A divided heart?

Or contemplate the words "It was a okay day." By merely substituting "a" for the more conventional "an," the author recreates the guileless naivete of childhood, while subtly punning on the slang expression "A-okay," with its subliminal militaristic associations." The innocence of childhood is thus juxtaposed with the horrors of warfare. Masterful!

And the buyer paid a mere $600,000 (including the 20% premium) for fifty pages of these stylistic coups and Proustian insights? Clearly it would be a bargain at ten times the price. These diaries are fated to take their place beside the First Folio of Shakespeare, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, and the collected poems of Emily Dickinson.

Some, no doubt, will be cynical about the purchase of these diaries, but I say, fie on the naysayers! This inspiring story - and the still more inspiring woman behind it - proves that even in an age saturated with mindless diversions and tabloid sensationalism, the written word in all its power and beauty continues to command center stage.

Comments

[Bob Wallace]

Shakespeare, Dostoevski...all amateurs compared to her!

[J. Carson Black]

Priceless, MP. Somewhere there's an English/Creative Writing program at a college looking at you right now as a potential department head.

[Tony M]

Perhaps instead of making fun of Smith, we should be making fun of the people capitalizing on the sad, tawdry end of her life by selling and presenting her private journal. After all, she is not the one who called herself "a moody and complicated woman". That was written by some vulture hoping to profit from her corpse.

Anna Nicole Smith was famous for taking her clothes off, for marrying an elderly multi-millionaire, for her legal battles, the death of her son and finally her own death. Hardly admirable. However she did not invent the celebrity culture that gave her fame. You can even argue that her attempts to exploit it to her advantage were ham handed, pathetic and damaging to her life.

She was no innocent, of course. But what she was was an uneducated, pathetic person whose fame reflects a pathetic light on our culture. There are far more worthy targets in this ugly business than the grammar and syntax of the high school drop.

[Michael Prescott]

Okay, it was mean-spirited ...

But I have trouble feeling sympathy for a woman who married an octogenarian for his money and then sued all the way to the Supreme Court to make sure she got it.

Anyway, what mainly ticked me off was that Smith's illiterate ramblings garnered $600,000 and will undoubtedly become a bestselling book. This reflects rather badly on our culture, no?

[Tony M]

I'll climb down off my high horse now...

I don't feel sorry for her (other than the death of her son), but let's beat her up for what she did while she was alive instead of what vultures are doing now that she's dead.

And yes, I can see how the $600,000.00 would piss off an actual write. We can only hope that a sudden outbreak of common sense prevents the book from being a best seller...

[MT.Net]

As much as I hate hearing about ANS, I did enjoy your post. Well done!