"Peridote" wrote in message
om...
There is one book I have always regretted not obtaining. Saw it in a
thrift shop. A well-worn hardcover non-descript modern fiction book.
But a mental patient had filled it up, using it as a diary during
their incarceration. Sort of a "one Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"
situation. After a few minutes reading the interesting commentary, I
decided not to buy the disgusting looking book, and have regretted it
ever since.

A couple years ago a friend purchased a woman's diary from a sidewalk seller in
NYC. The woman was a spinster, age indeterminate, who lived with her mother,
circa 1930. She was a receptionist in an MDs office, a virgin, had had an affair
with the MD, a married man, and gotten pregnant; the MD performed an abortion
and fired her shortly thereafter. She commenced stalking the MD, which stalking
the diary chronicles. The thing is that she's seemingly oblivious to the fact
that she's stalking him; she invariably expresses surprise at how her path
crosses the MDs: the trajectory of her errands always forces her to walk past
his office, where she just happens to glance in his window; she goes to the
movies and ends up sitting directly behind the MD and his wife, a coincidence;
etc. In between stalking she cared for her mother, who suffered from "female
trouble." Not too much about the mother save an undercurrent of resentment and
hatred, and every penny spent on her mother's care meticulously entered and
totaled weekly and monthly. About half the book is full, margin to margin; then
nothing. Murder? Suicide? Creedmoor? Merely a new ledger? Dunno. If it's a novel
(or a hoax) it's a work of genius; as a diary, it's madness. Just the same, I
lust for it.