Consciousness Bound to Flesh. Diaries and Notebooks. 1964–1980

"Sometimes, when unusual thoughts come to my mind, I think that my mother's diaries (and the actual book is the second of three volumes of her notes) are not just an autobiography, which she never intended to write (and had she done so, her autobiography would probably have been a highly literary and fragmented work, somewhat akin to John Updike's "Self-Consciousness," which she admired), but a remarkable autobiographical novel that she never intended to compose. If I develop my imagination along traditional lines, then the first volume of the diaries, "Reborn," would be a coming-of-age novel - her "Buddenbrooks" (recalling Mann's monumental work) or, on a more intimate note, her "Martin Eden" (the novel by Jack London that she read in her youth and spoke of with fondness until the end of her life). This second volume, which I named "Consciousness Bound to Flesh," borrowing a phrase from the diaries, would become a novel about active, successful maturity."