i'm reading the diaries of emilio renzi and a day in the life and wow i don't think i could do two more volumes it's a novel but it's his diaries? and is it edited? it has to be he wrote it his whole life but what determined what to leave in what to leave out much is just fragments of days that would have not left a trace unless in the recesses of his mind unless written down but why am i reading the minutiae of his working life i want the gist and then i see the second part a day in the life is more of a novel in which the writer ricardo piglia is not exactly the same as the writer emilio renzi who is a character but also somewhat omniscient both observed and observernand the writer who writes about the writer in the diaries is also a bartender who gleans the things a bartender would who was a writer of sorts himself it could have been i suspect all compacted into one volume if he'd lived longer and got some editing.