The Shorter Pepys

This diary in this abridged version, has given me more sheer pleasure than any other book I have ever read. Writing for himself alone, Pepys selected things for inclusion in the diary purely on the basis of how they struck him. This grand subjectivity would be fatal in a dull or passive or insensitive writer, but in Pepys it makes the work fresh and vibrant, constantly surprising, unlike anything else in literature. Even when describing an "important" scene, he is still his natural self and gives touches of his own behaviour, like this at the King's coronation: "But so great a noise, that I could make but little of the Musique; and endeed, it was lost to everybody. But I had so great a list to pissse, that I went out a little while before the King had done all his ceremonies...." Not just his behavior, but also his reactions: "As it grew darker, [the fire] appeared more and more, and in Corners and upon steeples and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire." That is from Pepys's stunning account of the first day of the great fire of London. It has no conscious artifice: Pepys's descriptions owe their power to his uncanny knack for expressing how the events struck him. So he gives details which a more "responsible" writer would have overlooked: "Among other things, the poor pigeons I perceive were loath to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconies till they were some of them burned, their wings, and fell down." The diary gives us the texture of Pepys's daily life - what he wore, what he ate, what skirts he lifted, and what he paid in hard cash for all this; the plays he saw, how the audiences behaved, the doorman who swindled him out of a shilling; his book collection, his musical instruments, the improvements to his apartment; his growing wealth, from sources bright and shady; his bowels and his testicles; the list is endless. Along with stories that are variously amusing, touching, shocking, there are episodes like this: "Before going to bed, I stood writing of this day its passages - while a drum came by, beating of a strange manner of beat, now and then a single stroke; which my wife and I wondered at, what the meaning of it should be." And this: "I sat up till the bell-man came by with his bell, just under my window as I was writing of this very line, and cried 'Past one of the clock, and a cold, frosty, windy morning.' One of the topics is Pepys himself - his thoughts, feelings and actions, and his thoughts and feelings about these. He had a lively inner life, was intimately in touch with it, and had the ability to know at any given moment how he felt and to write about it clearly and purely. We get Pepys warts and all. He does not pose for his self-portrait. When a stranger importunes his wife, he records, "I did give hi

Pepys's complete diaries are probably the closest thing to time travel that I will ever experience. This condensed edition takes the meat off the bones and serves it up with most of the flavor of the full Latham-edited version. The passion for women and for books, the details noticed at the Whitehall court of Charles II -- like the king's mistress's freshly-washed underwear hanging on a hedge in the privy garden to dry in the sun! -- and the layered record of the daily routine of a London man living in a time of immense change are fascinating.Note that this is a fine book for those who enjoy the Patrick O'Brian Aubry and Maturin series too. Pepys was instrumental in taking the British Navy from a ragged mix of merchant ships mixed in with war ships, haphazardly provisioned and manned by politically appointed (i.e. unexamined) officers to the fleet that brought Nelson to victory. This book is an excellent introduction to Pepys; I recommend it