Dear Diary
Elizabeth Wurtzel meets Sarah Silverman in this darkly humorous look back on adolescence and young adulthood from the popular Vice Magazine columnist. Juxtaposing more than ten years of diary entries against updates and interviews with the subjects of the entries-from former best friends to enemies, crushes to boyfriends-Lesley Arfin comes to realize maybe her life wasn't exactly as she had written it. When she wrote about Cynthia Karacas (it's funny how you remember everyone's first and last...
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Elizabeth Wurtzel meets Sarah Silverman in this darkly humorous look back on adolescence and young adulthood from the popular Vice Magazine columnist. Juxtaposing more than ten years of diary entries against updates and interviews with the subjects of the entries-from former best friends to enemies, crushes to boyfriends-Lesley Arfin comes to realize maybe her life wasn't exactly as she had written it. When she wrote about Cynthia Karacas (it's funny how you remember everyone's first and last name like that) making her feel "retarded" in 10th grade, the world was a dark, lonely place and she could see no light at the end of the tunnel. When she discovered heroin things got even worse. Today, with the perspective that only rock bottom can give you, Lesley looks back at the apocalypse that was adolescence and asks, "What the hell was I talking about?" Lesley's hilarious updates remind us how heavy it all seemed back then and how irrelevant it all really is in the face of adulthood. When she digs up all her old friends and enemies to get their take on each entry, a whole new perspective is added. Some are eager to apologize while others are still mad because, "Let's face it, you were a loser." No matter who she talks to about the days we all discovered sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll, one thing is abundantly clear: we were ridiculous.
The year I was cool September 1990 (Age 11) DEAR DIARY, Tomorrow is the first day of 6th grade!! I am so nervous. I don 't know what to wear but I feel like every year on the first day of school I blow it. I really don 't want to get lost. That is the number one thing I am afraid of. Number two is not having any friends in my lunch. UPDATE I had two really good friends in 5th grade (Tiffany Solomon and Alexis Grucela) but I wanted to hang out with the cool kids in 6th grade so I pretended Tiffany and Alexis didn't exist. The way you break up with friends on the first day of Junior High is: you don 't sit with them at lunch, which is what I did. I walked right by them and we never spoke again. I don 't feel bad about it. Not even today, 17 years later. It 's a rite of passage, like in "Freaks and Geeks " or "My So Called Life. " The next ten years went: popular and cool, then persona non grata, then slut, then punk rock chick, then raver, then heroin addict, then clean, then writing this book... But I 'm getting ahead of myself. I was popular and cool for most of 6th grade and I didn 't write in my diary very much until April 18th, 1991 when, overnight, I basically turned into Dawn Weiner from "Welcome to the Dollhouse. "
Foreword Chloe Sevigny viiiPreface xviJunior High: Age 12-14 2High School: Age 14-18 44College: Age 18-22 130Grown-Up: Age 22-28 186Afterword 229
