A treasury of wisdom about the writing life

In the penultimate entry of Toby Litt’s A Writer’s Diary, an autofictional daily record of a writer named Toby Litt (which first appeared from Substack), he admits he began the project wanting to write ‘the best book that has ever been written about writing – about the physical act of writing, and the metaphysical act’. He may not have succeeded (Norman Mailer’s The Spooky Art might fit this description), but substitute the word ‘living’ for ‘writing’ and he might be closer to an apt summary. It’s an extraordinary record of life’s minutiae, oscillating from the trivial to the transcendent, often on the same page.

Which isn’t to say the book doesn’t contain a treasury of wisdom about the writing life. Beginning in the January of an unnamed year (Sonntag 1 January), the German diary, a gift from his partner Leigh, reveals that Litt is about to become a father, while his mother is dying of cancer.