Note Book

by Jeff Nunokawa

A moving and original literary approach to self-understanding through social media

"The hunger for a feeling of connection that informs most everything I've written flows from a common break in a common heart, one I share with everyone I’ve ever really known."― Note Book

Every single morning since early 2007, Princeton English professor Jeff Nunokawa has posted a brief essay in the Notes section of his Facebook page. Often just a few sentences but never more than a few paragraphs, these compelling literary and personal meditations have raised the Facebook post to an art form, gained thousands of loyal readers, and been featured in the New Yorker . In Note Book , Nunokawa has selected some 250 of the most powerful and memorable of these essays, many accompanied by the snapshots originally posted alongside them. The result is a new kind of literary work for the age of digital and social media, one that reimagines the essay’s efforts, at least since Montaigne, to understand our common condition by trying to understand ourselves.

Ranging widely, the essays often begin with a quotation from one of Nunokawa’s favorite writers―George Eliot, Henry James, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. H. Auden, Robert Frost, or James Merrill, to name a few. At other times, Nunokawa is just as likely to be discussing Joni Mitchell or Spanish soccer striker Fernando Torres.

Confessional and moving, enlightening and entertaining, Note Book is ultimately a profound reflection on loss and loneliness―and on the compensations that might be found through writing, literature, and connecting to others through social media.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Literary Fiction, American

360 pages, Hardcover

First published April 26, 2015

About the author

Jeff Erik Nunokawa is a Professor of English at Princeton University. He received a B.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. from Cornell University. His research interests lie primarily in 19th century British literature, theory and criticism and feminist, gender and sexuality studies.
Since joining the faculty in 1988, he has won the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1992 and The Class of 2001 University Award for Distinguished Teaching. At Princeton, Jeff also served as the Master of Rockefeller College during the 2007-2008 academic year.
He is known for his jovial behaviour and desire to sit among his students and discuss anything and everything. Some students attribute this behaviour to his rumoured breakfasts: two Red Bulls and three apples.
Jeff’s connection to his students is strengthened through his non-traditional use of Facebook. His Facebook activities consist primarily of writing Facebook notes, which range in length from a few sentences to a few paragraphs. He has written over 3 200 notes to date, a ‘writing experiment’ that forms the basis of his Note Book.

Reviews

[Barty (Bartholomew) Wu · Rating 3 out of 5]

dnf. i've been thumbing through this book little by little and enjoying tidbits of nunokawan wisdom in passing, but nothing is sticking for me. nunokawa starts each passage with a quotation (mostly from old-timey literary works), most of which i am unfamiliar with. i feel i am not the target audience for this book -- not just because of my unfamiliarity with the quotations, but also because of my inability to really understand his insights. i can comprehend what most of them mean on a literal level, but i understand very very clearly that i'd enjoy this book a lot more if i were more well-read and had lived more decades. he is obviously brilliant -- i'm just not mature enough to understand him.

for hope of enjoying this book thirty years down the line, i rate this 3 stars :)

[Bookforum Magazine]

"Note Book shows how old forms of writing, even nearly forgotten ones, can thrive in the digital age.

The book strongly establishes its author as–like Proust and Barthes, whom he cites, and Albert Cohen, whom he doesn't–one of the great mama's boys of literature."

–Barry Schwabsky on Jeff Nunukawa's Note Book in the Summer 2015 issue of Bookforum

To read the rest of this review, go to Bookforum:
http://bookforum.com/inprint/022_02

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. It reminded me of Professor Nunokawa's seminars, which were always engaging and thought-provoking (but slightly over my head). I read this book slowly, almost treating the entries as a series of meditations.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Note: the author is a friend (and former teacher) of mine.

I recognize that this book is definitely not for everyone; you have to appreciate some pretty highbrow literature, analysis thereof, and wordy prose. But if that's your kind of thing and you also want some funny or moving reflections about life thrown in along the way, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

I've been following Nunokawa's Facebook notes (selections from which make up this book) at least sporadically since he started them (when I was an student--not of his, yet, but at least of his department). I certainly hadn't (and still haven't) read all the books or poems these notes are supposedly "on" (some stay more on-target than others), but it was always interesting to see what meanings he could pull out of the texts or what stories he'd wind up telling. I never followed his notes very regularly, so a lot of these I hadn't read before; it was interesting to revisit the ones I had, find the new ones, and see the evolution of the whole set over time. I'm pretty far removed from the world of "serious" literature and literary criticism now, so it's nice to revisit it (though doing so also reminds me why I left). Most of all, thought, it's always nicest to catch the flashes of Nunokawa's personality and bits of advice that come through in these little essays.

I know I'll definitely reread at least parts of this book periodically (and going through all of the references has added many books to my too-read list). On the whole this collection is pretty unorthodox and hard to categorize (not unlike the author), but definitely recommended for a certain type of person--basically, if nuggets semi-autobiographical literary criticism seems like something that would be up your alley, this book almost certainly will be; if that doesn't, then it won't.

[Anne Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a book you cannot read in one, not even in a few sittings. It has been written over the years, day by day, with a few comments inspiring the author at that specific time.
It contains lots of literary references, to Henry James, Roland Barthes (a French structuralist who reigned over the University of Aix-Marseille in literature as long as he was there), JD Salinger, quoting Wordsworth, Sartre of course, Bruno Bettleheim... and so many authors it is impossible to synthesize his work.
I don't think he wanted it changed into a condensate of his views of the world.
I believe this book is exactly what he wanted, short notes, meant to be read according to your own mood, and read again, months later, and felt differently.
I think he teaches us how to think, to meditate on a subject, get out of the usual frame of mind. Think new, differently, look for inspiration into those small pieces of time.
Like la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the book will never be finished by his readers, as you will discover something new everytime you open it.
Fascinating.

[Alaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of them books where you can read one page or ten, today or after a year, and you still find things to learn from. If you found the author reference works of literature you are not familiar with, it's okay don't despair because it doesn't matter, you will find something that resonate with you.