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Today: Miles Klee, culture writer at Rolling Stone, author of the novel Ivyland, and co-author, with Mads Gobbo, of the story collection Double Black Diamond. Issue No. 452Everyone Else’s Diary
Miles Klee Enter the MAGAZINE WORLD of Flaming Hydra
The Editors Everyone Else’s DiaryI have always aspired to be a person who keeps a diary, or a journal, or some version of a record of his days on this planet. My attempts have always failed, even when I give myself ways to make it easier: only a sentence per entry, for example, or perhaps the allowance of more abstract impressions and moods than actual reportage on events—little word collages. One notebook I began in the fall of 2020 got off to a promising start. The first page, dated September 26, recalls an afternoon at the beach with friends, where I saw a bat ray gliding through the shallows not far from where I stood. But this diary, like every one I’ve tried to maintain, soon devolved into complaints, so that it seemed to present a false version of myself—I have pessimistic views, but I am far from miserable or even depressed. Maybe it is easier to catalogue daily disappointments than describe the longer arc of what usually feels like a lucky, happy life. Maybe a sort of pretension forces me to perform the more “literary” mode of despair. Plus, I often find it difficult to relate my experiences plainly. I come from a family with its share of exaggerators, which may partially account for why I prefer to use scenes from my life as the scaffolding for outlandish fiction. At some point it hit me—probably after I read Kathryn Scanlan’s Aug 9—Fog, in which she cut and rearranged striking lines from the diary of an elderly woman that she’d bought at an estate sale—that what I really wanted was an escape from my own internal monologue, relief from my own voice. I started another journal that contained no original writing whatsoever; I only wrote down things I overheard spoken by total strangers. I meant for this project to generate material for short stories and novels, though I came to realize that the items of this collection would resist any recontextualization. Even after I had forgotten where a particular phrase had caught my ear, it still felt too specific to a time and place; they were like artifacts under museum glass that I couldn’t plunder for other purposes. Here is what is written in the first few pages of this notebook: “Rosa came over and told me how to do my job.”
“What’s up with the nipples?”
“I want to hang out with your grandma so bad.”
“Why do you keep calling velvet ‘corduroy’?”
“Guys, don’t forget those tanks.”
“This is my sustenance; if I don’t eat it, I think I’ll die.”
“The most expensive boat you’ll ever buy is a free one.”
“I’m losing the best years of my life.”
“You don’t know no throuples.”
“My feet are burning.”
“I’m smart, but I can’t spell.”
“Oh my god, I really don’t care.”
“Everyone talks about her, but I have no idea who she is.”
“I did see results.”
“The point of a wedding is not to spend as much money as possible.”
“My Iranian friend has dinner plans.”
“It takes me two hours to do this hair.”
“If you throw it at me, I’m never talking to you again.”
“I’m supposed to go in on Wednesdays, but I don’t.”
I still quite enjoy keeping an archive of these random utterances, for no reason except the satisfaction of jotting them down—which is, after all, what many would consider the true value of any diary. I might convince myself I am learning about certain elements of the human condition, or how we speak to one another, that will prove useful in crafting good dialogue for future characters, though really I harbor no such expectations. The sayings are enough, because they chart the path of my life through the world—I, the listener, am what they have in common. This notebook becomes a personal diary thanks to my specific absence from it. I have always admired how the author Don DeLillo talks of the “sculptural” quality of printed language, the importance of paying attention to the sequence of shapes we choose to convey meaning. Here, I print words that would otherwise be lost on the air, make them solid as statues, and in return I get a self-portrait in of myself in silhouette, moving among them. What it comes down to, I believe, is that I can never be as interesting as everyone else. A liberating thought! There’s no need to transcribe the mundane things I do and see, when the spaces I pass through also freely provide an endless banquet of these tidbits of mysterious amusement. I’m already looking forward to this year’s holiday travel, knowing just how many odd and unexpected remarks will find their way to me. The comedian Lewis Black has a memorable riff about being driven mad by an inexplicable comment he once overheard from a young woman: “If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.” In that (very funny) routine, Black acts out the rising frenzy of trying to understand what this can possibly mean, tortured by unanswered and unanswerable questions. I feel precisely the opposite: intense pleasure in a statement, unwittingly transmitted beyond its intended audience, that nonetheless remains, in its way, a precious secret. GOOD IDEAEnter the MAGAZINE WORLD of Flaming Hydraby The EditorsENTER the MAGAZINE WORLD of Flaming Hydra Been wondering about subscribing to FLAMING HYDRA?? With our new top tier MAGAZINE WORLD annual subscription, you’ll enjoy all Flaming Hydra’s celebrated weekdaily newsletters, archives, commenting privileges, the weekly HYDRANYM, and… You’ll also receive, via snail mail, two beautiful, high quality limited edition magazines by Flaming Hydra contributors. Each magazine is produced by a different editor, and will contain a wide variety of writing and art, including new works and classics from our archives. SOME TESTIMONIALSYOU’LL ALSO RECEIVE the new quarterly Broadsheet for MAGAZINE WORLD subscribers only: a thematic selection of art and stories (both new and old) selected especially for Flaming Hydra’s top tier subscribers. The first Broadsheet will be published January 15, 2026, and mid-month in April, July, and October 2026. The subscription price includes U.S. postage; please get in touch if you’d like a quote for postage outside the continental U.S. We are enjoying putting these together very much, and we think you’ll love them too. Our first magazine, New Frontiers in Combustion, will post in April or May. Quantities are limited, so please order your Flaming Hydra MAGAZINE WORLD subscription now. This Black Friday weekend only, for new subscribers: 10% OFF! Thank you for Supporting Our Serpent, and for helping to keep real journalism, writing, and art, for real readers, alive and blazing.
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