Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see—because I do not happen to be a ‘Somebody’—why my diary should not be interesting.”
- Source
- The Diary of a Nobody
- Date
- 1892
- Local voice
- Fictional narrator · Charles Pooter
Meaning of “Why should I not publish my diary? I…”
Pooter’s perfectly reasonable defense of an ordinary diary is also comic because the novel builds humor from the gap between his confidence in his importance and the triviality he records.
Where does it come from?
The Diary of a Nobody, “Introduction by Mr. Pooter”; Project Gutenberg #1026. Charles Pooter asks why his diary should not be published even though he is not a “Somebody,” establishing the novel’s fictional self-important diarist before Chapter I begins. This is Pooter’s comic narrative voice, not autobiographical testimony by George or Weedon Grossmith.
Why the local voice matters
The introduction is signed by the fictional diarist Charles Pooter.
