A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term by Bronisław Malinowski

For him, the Trobrianders were just savages. He was, as another reviewer has pointed out, a 19th century European man in the 20th century, with few doubts as to the superiority of his culture. In fact, there is very little written about his work, but a great amount of beautiful prose about sunsets, sailing, the sea, and scenery. This is the stuff of everyone’s life and does not elucidate the thought processes or research style that produced the famous books. He should buckle down and work harder, but he’s slacking off again. The book is full of reprimands to himself-to stop reading novels, for example-but the very next day, he is reading another novel. Unlike other anthropologists, for example, Hortense Powdermaker, he does not seem to have befriended any of the people among whom he worked, rather he hung out with any European that washed up on these remote islands, but didn’t particularly like them. (He did eventually marry her.) His frustrations and loneliness among an entirely different people lead him to make racist comments-not a lovely picture.

He wavers, lusts after some woman he’s just met, then returns to dreams of E.R.M. He remembers other girlfriends or loves, then reprimands himself over and over for doing so. back in Australia (stated in mostly Victorian terms, I should add). It contains an endless preoccupation with his health plus his longing for sex and his beloved E.R.M. Many people felt that it should never have been published (25 years after his death) because a) it was private, b) it doesn’t show the scholar in a particularly good light and c) it isn't very enlightening on the process of research that made Malinowski famous. While he must have taken copious notes over the long period of his exile/research, he also wrote this diary. Malinowski became one of the founding fathers of modern anthropology, influencing generations of scholars. The work that he did on the lives and culture of the islanders allowed him to write many books, all of which became classics. He spent the entire war period there, with a visit back to Australia once. He was not interned, though an “enemy alien” and was in fact given funds to carry out his work in the Trobriand Islands, a small archipelago off the southeastern corner of the huge main island. In 1914, at the age of 30, he was in Melbourne, Australia, planning a research expedition to Papua New Guinea, when WW I broke out. Of course, if you happen to be a giant in your chosen field and famous all around the world, you’d better think twice! Bronislaw Malinowski was born in the Polish part of Austria-Hungary and wound up as an anthropologist after a career switch in his twenties.

If you’re going to write a diary of your most private thoughts, you’d better think about what’s going to happen to it after you die.

A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term by Bronisław Malinowski