It was reassuring to hear Zadie Smith talking on Desert Island Discs about how much she hates re-visiting her own books. Re-reading the first twenty pages of White teeth, she said, is enough to 'induce nausea'. Good. That makes me feel a bit better about the fear and loathing I entertain for some of my old stuff.
Actually I got rid of all my teenage diaries, and despite the occasional twinge of regret I think, on the whole, I was wise. It's not as if they comprised a Pepysian record of British Life in the 1990s. They didn't even record the events of my own life, in the sense that when I was writing I rarely lifted my gaze very far from my own navel. No, my teenage diaries documented the tedious ups and downs (mostly the downs) of my inner life. I only ever bothered to make an entry when the entire fabric of the universe had imploded (the unrequited Love of my Life failing to notice my murmured 'hello' at the church fundraiser barbeque, for example). 'Less is more' meant nothing to me; I never held back with my adjectives, under-linings, exclamation marks or general hyperbole.
Oh yes, I was definitely right to destroy those diaries. What if I were to go under the proverbial bus tomorrow? How awful to think of my children inheriting a pile of spiral bound notebooks filled with nothing but teenagery howls of angst. They might think it was actually me talking.
I found an exercise book full of adolescent 'poems' the other day. They're awful; goodness knows how they escaped elimination over the years. Self-pitying, melodramatic, humourless...and they don't even scan. I do remember feeling, in those far-off days, that I was a Victorian person born into the wrong century (which is what comes of taking Jane Eyre too seriously) and that's evidently the spirit in which I wrote these poems. I can't quite bring myself to quote, but let's just say there's an awful lot of death and unrequited love; epic imagery involving stars/fires/hell/blood/angels; words like "Alas!" and "thou" and plenty of personified abstract nouns ("Oh, Love!" "Oh, Hate!" "Oh Desolation!" etc. etc.). Greek gods and goddesses appear here and there - my attempt, I suppose, to salvage things with a bit of classical razzle-dazzle. Oh, and then there's the poem I wrote when our dog was put down, which references the death of Patroklos in The Iliad...
Teenage diaries and poems are one thing; at least they are private and easily destroyed. Published words are another matter. I used to think that being published would be like being vaccinated against self-doubt. Not so. Mere publication doesn't, in fact, have the power to turn nonsense into quality literature. What's worse, you no longer have the luxury to sigh, "Alas, what a complete fat-head I was when I wrote that," as you impale your notebook on a poker and shove it to the back of the wood-burner. It's out there and, if you let it, it will haunt you. The tiniest typo can make you wonder how you will ever show your face again, let alone all the soul-baring stuff that really matters. The potential for self-torture is massive. You start trying to work out what other people are thinking about you, which is a pointless, pompous, paralysing exercise.
Not all rediscoveries are nasty, though. I like finding cryptic notes-to-self that I dashed off years ago; things that must have made perfect sense to me at the time but have become pleasingly mysterious now that the context is forgotten. Scrawled at a funny angle across the cover of an A4 refill pad, for example: 'it's - disheartening (she went on). Strand of her hair'. What was that about? Or, 'Strong hand being pulled along by ghostly one? Possibly' They sound like clues for The Times crossword. It's nice to be intrigued by my own former self. At any rate, it makes a change from thinking: "Oh no! Not that self-obsessed teenager again! Maybe if I walk past quickly without meeting her eye she'll think I haven't seen her..."
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