100 years ago, Arthur Inman decided to write the most brutally honest and explicit diary in history—so he hired people to tell him their intimate secrets
I bought the two-volume set when it was published in 1985 -- the reviews made it sound like a fascinating freak show, which it is, and I've always been drawn to portraits of Boston brahmins gone off the rails. I read half of the first volume before setting it aside for a series of cold showers. Never picked it up again but it still sits on my bookshelf, glowering. Thanks for the reminder of its very dark, um charms.
Definitely weird. But there’s enough disgusting, dispiriting, hateful, bizarre stuff daily in the news and social media…don’t think Inman is for me. Still…you’re great at finding intriguing subjects!
What a wild deep dive. I had never heard of Arthur Inman, but the idea of crowd-sourcing a diary in the 1920s is ahead of its time in the strangest way possible.
The other side of it is that Inman preserved the words of his "talkers", which might have disappeared into the ether otherwise. Someone might find value in them...
The fact that he paid them instead of charging them for his services certainly would have enticed them to speak to him in ways they would not even have done with a psychiartist if they had had the chance.
Fascinating essay, Ted! Another diarist of note was Edward Robb Ellis (1911-1998), though his journal was not transgressive like Inman's. Ellis began keeping a diary during Christmas break in 1927 when he and a couple teenage friends dared one another to start keeping a journal, and see who could keep it the longest—a daily custom Ellis maintained to the year of his death; the 71-year span was recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as longer than any other diarist in American letters. In his early twenties, Ellis became a reporter and feature writer for newspapers, and ended up writing for papers in New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Chicago, and New York City, where he worked for the World Telegram & Sun, which boasted on its masthead that it was "NYC's most ebuillient newspaper," a trait that also defined Ellis's prose style. Retiring from journalism in his fifties, he began writing books. In his newspaper writing he covered news of the day, including violent crime and civic corruption, and profiled many public figures—Louis Armstrong, Sinclair Lewis, Paul Robeson, Kim Novak and post-presidential Harry Truman among them—and then would reflect in his diary about all the work from a personal perspective. In 1995 I was privileged to edit and publish a book he culled from his journal, "A Diary of the Century." It was tantamount to an autobiography and a portrait of the 20th century.
"Inman’s talkers didn’t seem very interested in self-censorship, and many clearly savored the opportunity to tell their raw stories without fear of consequences or judgment"
Reminds me of the kind of feeling exhacerbated by gooner culture, specially material portraying dom-sub dynamics. How profoundly seen someone can feel by a stranger on the internet calling them out on their most depraves impulses and giving them permition to surrender to them. "Porn controls your brain and you know it, stop resisting and do what Mommy says, she knows what you need and how to make you feel good"
Interesting, my immediate impulse was to see if the diary was available and finding it (used) I ordered it right away. Not for titillation, god knows Ive got plenty stories of my own, but to experience first (second? third?) hand these human experiences. Thanks Ted!
This sounds like PostSecret crossed with The Cut's Sex Diary.
What I found most interesting is that Inman wrote how people talked. Those dialects are going away.
And what I want to more about is this: You note that psychiatry was still stigmatized in 1930, but in the recent HBO documentary on Mel Brooks, "The 99-Year-Old Man," he said he started going to therapy in the 1950s, introduced to therapist by his friend, which suggest the stigma had disappeared. So what changed? I'd guess the Depression, but who had money for therapists then, or the war, but that famously was not talked about by returning vets (hence "Flags of our Fathers").
Inman was surely a figurative ancester not only of Knausgård, but also Spalding Gray, who was famous for (among other things) his live onstage interviews with "regular people." I was privileged to witness this in action some years ago at the Prospect Park bandshell in Brooklyn.
Sounds like the Inman tomes are a must-read for fiction writers, whose livelihood depends on the creation of realistic and multi faceted characters. I also recommend reading psychology case studies (see my own Substack for an article on this topic) for the same reason. The extremes reached by the psychologically disturbed are found in nascent form in every individual. "There but for the grace of God go I...!"
He sounds like an evil Studs Terkel.
That’s my thought exactly!!
I bought the two-volume set when it was published in 1985 -- the reviews made it sound like a fascinating freak show, which it is, and I've always been drawn to portraits of Boston brahmins gone off the rails. I read half of the first volume before setting it aside for a series of cold showers. Never picked it up again but it still sits on my bookshelf, glowering. Thanks for the reminder of its very dark, um charms.
Thank you very much for this.
I hadn’t heard of Inman before, and now I can’t stop thinking about him.
He spent 40 years collecting other people’s voices to build his own. And in the end, posterity filed him under dysfunction, not literature.
There’s something quietly devastating in that. The man who wanted to capture everything about human life got captured by it instead.
Ok, this alone got me to pony up for an annual subscription.
I love stories like this, Henry Darger, and other misfits who produce curiously fascinating works.
You won't be disappointed. This Substack is amazing.
Definitely weird. But there’s enough disgusting, dispiriting, hateful, bizarre stuff daily in the news and social media…don’t think Inman is for me. Still…you’re great at finding intriguing subjects!
What a wild deep dive. I had never heard of Arthur Inman, but the idea of crowd-sourcing a diary in the 1920s is ahead of its time in the strangest way possible.
No, thanks. I'll skip Inman. Real life is enough for me with rehashing its tragedies and depravities in prose.
The other side of it is that Inman preserved the words of his "talkers", which might have disappeared into the ether otherwise. Someone might find value in them...
The fact that he paid them instead of charging them for his services certainly would have enticed them to speak to him in ways they would not even have done with a psychiartist if they had had the chance.
Reminds me of this, though this is more like religious confession: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostSecret
Fascinating essay, Ted! Another diarist of note was Edward Robb Ellis (1911-1998), though his journal was not transgressive like Inman's. Ellis began keeping a diary during Christmas break in 1927 when he and a couple teenage friends dared one another to start keeping a journal, and see who could keep it the longest—a daily custom Ellis maintained to the year of his death; the 71-year span was recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as longer than any other diarist in American letters. In his early twenties, Ellis became a reporter and feature writer for newspapers, and ended up writing for papers in New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Chicago, and New York City, where he worked for the World Telegram & Sun, which boasted on its masthead that it was "NYC's most ebuillient newspaper," a trait that also defined Ellis's prose style. Retiring from journalism in his fifties, he began writing books. In his newspaper writing he covered news of the day, including violent crime and civic corruption, and profiled many public figures—Louis Armstrong, Sinclair Lewis, Paul Robeson, Kim Novak and post-presidential Harry Truman among them—and then would reflect in his diary about all the work from a personal perspective. In 1995 I was privileged to edit and publish a book he culled from his journal, "A Diary of the Century." It was tantamount to an autobiography and a portrait of the 20th century.
"Inman’s talkers didn’t seem very interested in self-censorship, and many clearly savored the opportunity to tell their raw stories without fear of consequences or judgment"
Reminds me of the kind of feeling exhacerbated by gooner culture, specially material portraying dom-sub dynamics. How profoundly seen someone can feel by a stranger on the internet calling them out on their most depraves impulses and giving them permition to surrender to them. "Porn controls your brain and you know it, stop resisting and do what Mommy says, she knows what you need and how to make you feel good"
Interesting, my immediate impulse was to see if the diary was available and finding it (used) I ordered it right away. Not for titillation, god knows Ive got plenty stories of my own, but to experience first (second? third?) hand these human experiences. Thanks Ted!
This sounds like PostSecret crossed with The Cut's Sex Diary.
What I found most interesting is that Inman wrote how people talked. Those dialects are going away.
And what I want to more about is this: You note that psychiatry was still stigmatized in 1930, but in the recent HBO documentary on Mel Brooks, "The 99-Year-Old Man," he said he started going to therapy in the 1950s, introduced to therapist by his friend, which suggest the stigma had disappeared. So what changed? I'd guess the Depression, but who had money for therapists then, or the war, but that famously was not talked about by returning vets (hence "Flags of our Fathers").
Great piece!
Thank you for sharing this with us!
Inman was surely a figurative ancester not only of Knausgård, but also Spalding Gray, who was famous for (among other things) his live onstage interviews with "regular people." I was privileged to witness this in action some years ago at the Prospect Park bandshell in Brooklyn.
Sounds like the Inman tomes are a must-read for fiction writers, whose livelihood depends on the creation of realistic and multi faceted characters. I also recommend reading psychology case studies (see my own Substack for an article on this topic) for the same reason. The extremes reached by the psychologically disturbed are found in nascent form in every individual. "There but for the grace of God go I...!"