I wonder why some bloggers blog anonymously. Maybe the answer can be found in a novel I just started reading, titled “Forbidden Notebook,”1 that starts with a diary entry of November 26, 1950, the first person narrator, Valeria Cossati, explaining her illegal purchase of a notebook:
“I saw that the tobacconist had assumed a severe expression to tell me: ‘I can’t. It’s forbidden.’ He explained that an officer stood guard at the door, every Sunday, to make sure that he sold tobacco only, nothing else. I was alone now in the shop. ‘I need it,’ I said, ‘I absolutely need it.’ I was speaking in a whisper, agitated, ready to insist, plead. So he looked around, then quickly grabbed a notebook and handed it to me across the counter, saying: ‘Hide it under your coat’” (10).
Having obtained the notebook, Valeria must now find a place to keep it hidden in her apartment, secret from her husband, Michele, and her two children, Mirella and Ricardo. And she conspires with her would-be writing self to find time when the others won’t notice to write in her notebook:
“For more than two weeks I’ve kept the notebook hidden without being able to write in it. Since the first day, I’ve been constantly moving it around – I’ve had a hard time finding a hiding place where it wouldn’t be immediately discovered. If the children found it, Ricardo would have appropriated it for taking notes at the University or Mirella for the diary she keeps locked in her drawer. I could have defended it, but I would have had to explain it” (11).
Her anxiety builds, and she finally starts to write, but says,
“I have to confess – I haven’t had a moment’s peace since I got this notebook” (11).
Yet she looks forward to finding the opportunity to write, writing that no one will read but herself:
“I always used to be a little sad when the children went out, but now I wish they’d go so I’d be left alone to write” (11).
Then of course the metatheme makes itself obvious:
“The strangest thing is that when I can finally take the notebook out of its hiding place, sit down, and begin to write, I find I have nothing to say except to report on the daily struggle I endure to hide it” (12).
She asks for a drawer, one she can lock. “For what?” her husband asks. “I answered, “some notes. Or maybe a diary, like Mirella” (15).
“They all, including Michele, began laughing at the idea that I might keep a diary. ‘What would you write, mamma?’ said Michele.”
They more than laugh; they make fun of her, until, “Suddenly, I burst into tears” (16).
Michele suggests a cognac to settle her down, but she refuses, because,
“Embarrassed, I looked away. In the pantry, next to the cognac bottle, in an old biscuit tin, I had hidden the notebook” (17).
I first started my blog, The Coming of the Toads, back in 2007. I had been reading and following – dare I say, studying – a few blogs, and had even tried my hand at a few comments when I decided to deal myself in (solitaire though the game was). After a few posts, I deleted everything, then almost as soon randomly reinstated it. Of course I had no readers, no “followers,” to begin with, so no worries, but I tried to take the writing seriously nevertheless, which is to say with literary decorum, as oxymoronic as that might sound to some readers, but one is never alone, after all, and must address the possibility against the assumption no one will read it that someone might read it. But either way, so what? Such irony might immediately call for self-deprecation, which might be a way of keeping one’s intentions, one’s writing, hidden, self-prohibited.
- “Forbidden Notebook,” by Alba De Cespedes. Originally published in Italian as Quaderno Proibito in 1952 by Mondadori. At first, it seemed hard to find. I tried Alibris and Amazon, and I now somehow have two: a first paperback edition, 2024, Astra House, and a Pushkin Press edition, also 2024, both Translation by Ann Goldstein and Forward by Jhumpa Lahiri. ↩︎
The Coming of the Toads 