The Folded Clock: A Diary

May 7

Today I begin reading the new book by an author I adore. It's a non-fiction work in diary format, a departure from the author's normal tales. I look forward to my time in these pages. How often have I wanted to better know an artist whose work I love? This is my chance. I feel I am being invited to the author's residence for coffee and am allowed to ask anything. What insight will this author have? What are her deepest fears and most unspoken desires? What is she like when she isn't “being a writer”? I'm about to find out.

June 23

Today I finished trudging through the book I started last month. While my opinion of the author's talents regarding writing has not changed, my opinion of the author herself most definitely has. I had show more stated that I felt like I was being invited to the author's residence for coffee; I was wrong. While reading this book—this diary—I was transported to the author's residence, but it was for a formal dinner party, the kind where you feel awkward the entire time, wondering if everyone is staring at you because you put your fork down at the wrong angle on your plate. But no one at this party was paying me any attention, because the author was the center of the show. That's okay. It's what I expected. I wanted to know more about her. But what I'd hoped for was an intelligent conversation full of insight, humor, and heart. What I got instead was an intelligently-written drunken tirade. You know the dinner party where the hostess holds her wine glass at an angle and tells you about the time she urinated in a plane's airsickness bag and constantly reminds you how she's happy and stable? How she's glad she cheated on her first husband with her second, but keeps bringing it up every few minutes as if it haunts her? How she's proud to teach her eight-year-old daughter how to look more “fuckable”? How life is great because she spends the summer in Maine *sip* the winter in New York *sip* how she's been to Italy *sip* Germany *sip* France *sip* Morocco *sip*? That's the dinner party I just came home from.

I feel bad saying such things, because I really do appreciate this author's talent. While others have bashed her fiction (her four major works of fiction average a rating of 3.08 on Goodreads), called her writing juvenile and stilted, and written her off as an untalented hack, I have stood by her side. I have defended her brilliance. Ironically, it is this most recent work that maintains a rating that borders four stars. Apparently, I am in the minority.

What is it about this diary that others love? Is it the anecdote-laden short passages that are about nothing and everything? Is it the gossip? Is it the extravagant lifestyle? The constant abandon the author shows? Or the author's curious love of the reality television show, The Bachelor? Whatever it is, I want none of it.

I think what irritated me most is how the author repeatedly mentioned her woes and talked about her inability to buy things she wanted. In fact, a huge chunk of this book is about eBay shopping. When combined with her many mentions of her foreign travels and her dinner parties with elite artists, this book seems to be about the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Maybe the author wishes for more than second-hand Internet shopping. Maybe travels to Europe are not enough. But as someone who knows what “starving artist” means, as someone who gave up full-time employment and security to write a novel and stay home with my kids, as someone who can't afford a vacation outside of the state of Kansas, and as someone who saves and saves and saves in order to buy $50 shoes from Famous Footwear, I find the author's complaints about $500 boots repulsive. There are much bigger concerns in the world, but the writer seems unaware or uncaring.

I hope the writer can forgive me. I did love the cadence and beauty of many of the sentences in this work. Maybe there is some brilliance in the parallel drawn between the juvenile diary of an adolescent girl and the juvenile diary of a middle-aged woman. I am still a fan. But my dearest author, I do not wish to be your friend. I hope you will continue to write many wonderful works of fiction, but please do not invite me again for a dinner party. I will come to your readings. I will continue to defend your novels. But friends we cannot be. And please know that your confusion of the Library of Congress classification with Dewey Decimal is unforgivable. For everything else, I'll accept apology in the form of a new novel. show less

What a great book! It's a diary, although the years are not specified and the dates are not consecutive.

Each of the entries starts "Today I ..." and what follows is a riff and whatever it was she did or thought on that day - almost like she's writing Jazz. Some entries are funny (meeting an elderly famous person when she's wearing a bathing suit), some self-reflective (why is her dieting husband threatening?), and metaphoric (if the barn stands without the rocks for support, her marriage should withstand the slip of paper the wedding vows were written on.) along the way we encounter her children, current husband, first husband, friends and acquaintances who pop up on various days.

The last entry was begun early in the writing, but show more finished at the end. It, too, is a great "folded" riff and makes a great ending to this memoir. Heidi - Ifeel like I know you! show less

3.5 "Today I wondered 'What is the worth of a day?'" An intriguing first line and one that strikes a personal note, when I think of the ways we measure our time and accomplishments. The "Today I..." motif repeats as this diary by Julavits spans 2 years of her life: alternating between time in NYC, her primary home; Maine, her summer home; and Germany where her husband was attending a foreign policy summit for a couple months. Time is fluid in this diary, with dates skipping all around, which took me a little while to pick up on in the audio version. I thought I accidentally had my playlist on shuffle! But I think that is part of her point -- we tend not to reflect chronologically. I was torn between admiration for some of her creative show more observations and flights of fancy (no wonder she is a writer if she can spin a whole riff on buying something at the store!) and irritation for how involved some potential (yet nonexistent!) scenarios spun off into neurotic worrying and anxiousness. Her life is definitely not dull -- she travels with her husband and children and includes some of these adventures, but it is her interior life that is so rich. Mundane takes on meaning which isn't a bad way to think for awhile. show less

The Folded Clock by Heidi Julavits is self-absorbed and absorbing, reflective, boring to some but not to me, diary of a young woman's thoughts with each date starting "Today I..." and continuing with an anecdote or meditation about her life, i.e. I walked by here when I was on my way to have an affair with the man who became my second husband, or I swam for hours on the last day of our Maine vacation in t he little town where I have summered most of my life, or I went to see my therapist who did not answer the door or I fought with my husband when we were in Berlin. and she continues to muse on these beginnings for a few pages before we willy nilly move on to another date, not necessarily chronological. As a writer, and one not given to show more this kind of introspection, I found her entries fascinating. I listened to the book on CD and my husband did not share my enthusiasm even though she's funny at times and off the wall with her neuroses. It was a voyeurish excursion but the worries and obsessions about aging and death and friendship which concern her are shared by many women and I was sorry to have the book end. I'd buy another installment. show less

The Folded Clock by Heidi Julavits is self-absorbed and absorbing, reflective, boring to some but not to me, diary of a young woman's thoughts with each date starting "Today I..." and continuing with an anecdote or meditation about her life, i.e. I walked by here when I was on my way to have an affair with the man who became my second husband, or I swam for hours on the last day of our Maine vacation in t he little town where I have summered most of my life, or I went to see my therapist who did not answer the door or I fought with my husband when we were in Berlin. and she continues to muse on these beginnings for a few pages before we willy nilly move on to another date, not necessarily chronological. As a writer, and one not given to show more this kind of introspection, I found her entries fascinating. I listened to the book on CD and my husband did not share my enthusiasm even though she's funny at times and off the wall with her neuroses. It was a voyeurish excursion but the worries and obsessions about aging and death and friendship which concern her are shared by many women and I was sorry to have the book end. I'd buy another installment. show less

Written in a diary format this book is funny and engaging. It is like reading ones interior honest and maybe neurotic thoughts that rarely end up being spoken.

Julavits is keenly observant and I enjoyed her ability to self-analyze and her willingness to reflect upon her own motives and behavior. It took reading through several entries before I began to grasp her style, and by the end I was chuckling at her neurotic musings. One thing I never did do, however, was develop a fondness for the author herself, which made reading her "diary" entries less engaging. Whether she was really writing as herself or as a persona, I just did not like her; nor could I relate to the freedom and self-centeredness of her upper-class, ultra-educated, East Coast lifestyle. She is enamored of her own blond beauti-hood and ability to attract & dump men, which would seemingly be passe by the time is one is mid-forties show more in age. Regardless, while I did not find her subject matter compelling, I was able to finish due to her writing talent. show less