From a Darkened Room: The Inman Diary

by Arthur Crew Inman, Daniel Aaron (Editor)

Only a few of us seek immortality, and fewer still by writing. But Arthur Inman challenged the odds. He calculated that if he kept a diary and spared no thoughts or actions, was entirely honest and open, and did not care about damage or harm to himself or others, he would succeed in gaining attention beyond the grave that he could not attain in life.



The diary became a many-layered and strikingly animated work of a gifted writer, by turns charming, repellent, shocking, cruel, and comical. But the diary is also an uninhibited history of his times, of his eccentricities and fantasies, of his bizarre marriage arrangements and sexual adventures. Inman's explorations of his own troubled nature made him excessively curious about the secret lives of others. Like some ghostly doctor-priest, he chronicled their outpourings of head and heart as vividly as he did his own. The diary reads like a nonfiction novel as it moves inexorably toward disaster.

This is an abridged version of the celebrated two-volume work published by Harvard as The Inman Diary: A Public and Private Confession.

592 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1996

Reviews

[Jon Frum · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave this book three stars, but it's a really difficult book to rate. I found the original two volume hardback version, and it's not exactly a fun read. The thing is, the guy was so nutty that I can't help but keep turning the pages to find out what outrage will come next. Inman was from a wealthy Atlanta family, and settled in to a hotel/rooming house in Boston, where he lived with his wife and a collection of employees for years. The guy was a deeply flawed person - hypochondriac, neurotic, bigot - and he spewed out his id in his diary with the intention of producing a great work of literature. The strangest thing is that in spite of his obvious flaws, at least some of the people he brought into his life actually liked him.

It took me a while, but I finally figured out who Arthur Inman reminded me of - Ignatius Reilly, from John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces. There's an unreality about the man that leaves me scratching my head over and over. Many passages are boring - as any diary will be - but here and there you get nuggets of value. Have no doubt about it - this guy was a bad person. But then many literary characters are.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book can on the one hand be simply described as the diary of a wealthy, neurotic Bostonian -- born 1895, died 1963. On the other hand it’s one of the weirdest and most engrossing books I’ve read. The author is “not a nice man” on pretty much every level—he’s weak, spoiled, abusive, hypochondriac, and bigoted. But, he does write well. His detail dragged me into his mean little world. There I found a surprising amount of enjoyment, useful information from his experiences, and smart analysis. This is a long read, over 500 pages, even though the “edited” version…

[Lloyd Fassett]

5/4/16 found it through a obit for the author. Sounds like an interesting book to find out about, but not to read the whole thing.