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Literary Journals

Literary Journals

Examples

The goal is to send students back in time, to investigate American history and to personalize it.

Walt Whitman's Journals

“Peaceful Moon”

March 9, 1863: Washington D. C.

We had a streak of good weather and I wander about a good deal, sometimes at night, under a somewhat peaceful moon. Tonight I took a long look at the President's house. It is magnificent. The palace-like, tall round columns and the solid walls are as pure and white as the snow. In fact, everything is so white, so marble-pure and dazzling, this is indeed the White House of poems and dramas. Men can only dream of palaces so fine. In their souls, on the battlefield, they can imagine a house so fine as this.

I hear the faint beating of the drums. The taps that…

November 2, 1920
New York, New York

Walking up the endless spiral staircase to my small, isolated apartment, I can smell the fresh, wet, blue paint covering the interior walls of the building and it is the scent of the paint which makes me feel home. It is amazing how such mundane things can give us a sense of comfort and relaxation. Returning home in complete solitude, I feel relaxed and content because I have no responsibilities or requirements as a book keeper for the rest of the evening. It is here where I relax for a delicate few, writing without any direction or guideline, diving into a boundless imagination, thinking searching discovering wondering into an imaginative cognizance where no boundaries of time or any other constraint exists. My thoughts awaken, steering my dreams into a direction unknown. I no longer have a sense of time. Time is dead. Half the day, I sit in a small cubicle reading, storing, and packaging books all day while I listen to the painstaking, repetitive sound of the clock ticking away. Often wondering how much longer I have until I can return home and write, I feel nonexistent. At home I am engulfed in my thoughts where there is no ticking clock or signal of time.... I realize how senseless our meaning of time is. When the clock stops ticking, time truly comes to life.

September 30, 1922
Oxford, Mississippi

The long awaited voyage home to Mississippi is finally complete. Stepping off the train, I look around me, smelling the southern air that once filled my lungs as a young boy. I look past the railroad tracks into the desolate fields and see two young children playing beside a rusty, decrepit swing set. Connecting back to my childhood is often painful for I miss the innocence and ever present wonder I once had. Playing soldiers in combat during the summer days in the blistering heat resuming the daily exploration of the immeasurable southern fields, are memories that will never be erased from my mind. I continue to write poetry and I'm taking a liking to it despite Sherwood Anderson's efforts to persuade me to write fiction. Poetry has been something I have connected with since I was a young boy. There was no greater time in my childhood than relaxing on my front porch while the hot sun beat against my burnt face. Looking out across the skyline watching the surreal radiant southern sunset, I remember my father's enthralling tales of his grandfather's heroic actions in the Civil War. Those were the moments on that porch where I discovered my intense passion for writing. The Night is a poem that recounts the galling anticipation the summer nights held during my childhood.

The Night The day was filled with joy and laughter, While the night filled with anxiety soon after. What would happen tomorrow? Would the Union soldiers kidnap Estelle filling me with sorrow? I knew the night would end soon, Letting me return to the battlefield at noon. What would come to me during my dreams at night? Would the Union soldiers challenges us to a fight? I think not said Estelle and all the Southern boys. Fighting to the death with our silly plastic toys. Innocent it may be, but southern honor was something serious. Playing in that weather child! Mother thought I was delirious. Continuing anticipation and expectancy for the battle we will soon fight. If I could only get through such a long anticipating night.

August 20th, 1923
Ole Miss Mailroom

Listening to the monotonous sound of water intermittently dripping, I don't know my surroundings, I can't feel my body, I only know the sound of water steadily falling from the overhanging window. Boom! Boom! I awake from my anesthetized state hearing my boss enter the mailroom with a look of disapproval. Knowing my job is on the line, I immediately try to think of an excuse to circumvent the situation. As luck would have it, he enters the room hurriedly and leaves even quicker, grabbing a stack of envelopes and weights. On several occasions, my boss has threatened my termination if I did not put more work effort into my daily routine. Unfortunately, sitting in the mailroom, or solitary confinement as I call it, for nine hours a day is rather lonely and monotonous. As a result, I entertain myself by reading whatever I can get my hands on. One author I particularly enjoy is the comical, sincere Mark Twain. One of the reasons I enjoy his work is because of the colloquial language he employs in all of his novels, particularly The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which I first read and immediately fell in love with as a young boy. Twain's startling ability to reveal the true, unique American spirit and culture of his time is something that I admire and truly respect.

What NOT to Do! Here is a journal that could use some improvement:

The Journal of Dashiell Hammett

July 1922

No matter how much I didn’t want to, I had to quit the agency. I had to due to my health, ever since my return from France, I have not been in good health, all because of tuberculosis. I don’t know what to do with my life now. It is hard to find a job now, the economy isn’t doing well because of how much money we spent on that war and rebuilding the countries. It is hard to find a job where I can apply my detective work. I am not strong in writing because I didn’t finish school, and I really don’t have any skill other than driving and being a detective.

[Comment: So you’ve covered the biography information. Now you need to get into Hammett’s style and themes. Try writing the beginning of a story. Look at the stories and movies. Where might Dashiell have gotten the idea of the character of Sam Spade, private detective? Then work backwards to recreate the first scene of a story. Remember, Dashiell Hammett worked in his early twenties as a detective in San Francisco

For example, walk down a specific San Francisco street (e. g. Fulton or Larkin in the Tenderloin) and notice a character who looks like one of the characters in the stories, or a person who is doings some simple, perhaps even innocent action that mimics one of the stories. Use your imagination to turn him into Miles Archer, in a trenchcoat, smoking a cigarette and about to be shot.]

Here’s How You Write These Journals

"The game was to be absolutely truthful and yet to have the absorbing quality of fiction. By absorbing, I mean that power that some fiction has of making you feel that you are in the story. You are inside the mind of the characters. . ."
--Tom Wolfe, interview, Rolling Stone, December 10, 1987, page 216)

1. Use a scene-by-scene construction. In other words, telling the entire story through a sequence of scenes rather than simple historical narration.

2. The use of real dialogue — the more the better.

3. The use of status details. That is, noting articles of clothing, manners, the way people treat children, the way they treat servants. All the things that indicate where a person thinks he fits in society or where he hopes to go socially. What is the author’s attitude towards life in general? How would Jack London describe people hiking in the woods? Collect artifacts--ticket stubs, specific types of clothing, etc...

4. The use of the first person point of view, which is depicting the scenes through a particular pair of eyes. Is the author a Romantic? Does he/she look at objects as emblems of a greater reality? Or is the author a realist like Hemingway?