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Daybook from Sheep Meadow: The Notebooks of Tallis Martinson
Peter Dimock was a big name in publishing at Random House and Columbia UP, and has worked with greats including Toni Morrison and Angela Davis (he actually lived in the same building as Toni Morrison as she wrote Beloved, and spoke about it at length in an interview for Bookslut). He has written at length about American military torture and racism; his book will be a superb read for readers interested in fiction contextualizing the BLM movement, Trump and Bush eras, etc.
150 pages, Paperback
First published May 25, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 28, 2023
The Author's Note at the end of Daybook begins, "Daybook is a novel of linguistic dispersion that attempts to refract the lived immediacy of an American present of permanent war through a prism of historical justice."
It is this and much more. Daybook is a collage of fictional, historical, and philosophical materials that are both powerful and beautiful, deeply emotional and highly intellectual, sometimes clear and revelatory and sometimes obscure in ways that require the reader to let the words (and Dimock has an excellent ear) wash over her.
The novel takes the form of one twin (man) editing the notebooks of the other twin (man), and introducing readers to both twins' ways of reading the notebook entries. This makes the novel at once literary and meta-literary, but not with the usual self-reflexive approach. This is a singular reading experience, difficult but rewarding for anyone interested in experimental fiction, especially experimental fiction with a social conscience.
It is this and much more. Daybook is a collage of fictional, historical, and philosophical materials that are both powerful and beautiful, deeply emotional and highly intellectual, sometimes clear and revelatory and sometimes obscure in ways that require the reader to let the words (and Dimock has an excellent ear) wash over her.
The novel takes the form of one twin (man) editing the notebooks of the other twin (man), and introducing readers to both twins' ways of reading the notebook entries. This makes the novel at once literary and meta-literary, but not with the usual self-reflexive approach. This is a singular reading experience, difficult but rewarding for anyone interested in experimental fiction, especially experimental fiction with a social conscience.
August 19, 2025
I enjoyed this book a majority of the time but I am going to start this review with the parts that I didn’t like. It takes quite a lot of time to read as it is both grammatically frustrating and has different sections that you will need to flip back and forth for.
The ‘grammatically frustrating’ aspect is something that I will forgive as I think (?) it can be supported by epigraphs I.1-3 as well as in various statements throughout the book. Didn’t make me less frustrated though. Some of those sentences just don’t grammatically make sense, and even if I can get through to the feeling and what might be the indented meaning, I still get hung up on the fact that IT DOESNT MAKE SENSE.
The constant flipping I had expected, but man, halfway through the book there’s this section with like 20 entries back to back and that shit was painful. I suppose the narrator did warn us that it would be most helpful to memorize the outline of Tallis’ historical method.. but I didn’t. So that’s something that can also be written up as user error and forgiven.
What I cannot forgive, however, is the poetry/terza rima section that pops up every once in a while. I have absolutely no clue what that was supposed to be. I’ve genuinely been thinking about trying to contact the author about that because I just cannot understand what it’s trying to tell me and I’m pretty sure it’s on me but I can’t be THAT dumb, right? Everything else I’ve at least gotten the jist of but THAT. No. Nothing.
There were a few editing errors where there was an extra period after a sentence or typo but nothing that would actually take you away from the story. I think I only noticed because I was going so slowly and basically rereading every page twice to make sure I understood. The most noticeable one was the header at the top of every page, not sure if it’s just my version but it says ‘DAYBROOK FROM SHEEP MEADOW’ which had me second guessing I even knew the title of the book I was reading lol.
Something I’ve seen in a lot of the other reviews is critique of the heavy use of quotations. I actually kinda liked it? It made sense to me how it was laid out and why and when they were used. The author also made a reference page at the back of the book for the authors and titles of the used books which I found very helpful.
What little of the twins life we did see, I loved. It definitely gave a lot of perspective on some of the entries/statements and I very much enjoyed the order that they came in, I feel like Dimock got that part absolutely perfect and it came out wonderful.
I would like to do a reread of this in the future once I’ve had some time to digest. I think hopefully I’ll be able to grasp more on my second read through.
[edited for additional info 8/19]
The ‘grammatically frustrating’ aspect is something that I will forgive as I think (?) it can be supported by epigraphs I.1-3 as well as in various statements throughout the book. Didn’t make me less frustrated though. Some of those sentences just don’t grammatically make sense, and even if I can get through to the feeling and what might be the indented meaning, I still get hung up on the fact that IT DOESNT MAKE SENSE.
The constant flipping I had expected, but man, halfway through the book there’s this section with like 20 entries back to back and that shit was painful. I suppose the narrator did warn us that it would be most helpful to memorize the outline of Tallis’ historical method.. but I didn’t. So that’s something that can also be written up as user error and forgiven.
What I cannot forgive, however, is the poetry/terza rima section that pops up every once in a while. I have absolutely no clue what that was supposed to be. I’ve genuinely been thinking about trying to contact the author about that because I just cannot understand what it’s trying to tell me and I’m pretty sure it’s on me but I can’t be THAT dumb, right? Everything else I’ve at least gotten the jist of but THAT. No. Nothing.
There were a few editing errors where there was an extra period after a sentence or typo but nothing that would actually take you away from the story. I think I only noticed because I was going so slowly and basically rereading every page twice to make sure I understood. The most noticeable one was the header at the top of every page, not sure if it’s just my version but it says ‘DAYBROOK FROM SHEEP MEADOW’ which had me second guessing I even knew the title of the book I was reading lol.
Something I’ve seen in a lot of the other reviews is critique of the heavy use of quotations. I actually kinda liked it? It made sense to me how it was laid out and why and when they were used. The author also made a reference page at the back of the book for the authors and titles of the used books which I found very helpful.
What little of the twins life we did see, I loved. It definitely gave a lot of perspective on some of the entries/statements and I very much enjoyed the order that they came in, I feel like Dimock got that part absolutely perfect and it came out wonderful.
I would like to do a reread of this in the future once I’ve had some time to digest. I think hopefully I’ll be able to grasp more on my second read through.
[edited for additional info 8/19]
December 29, 2022
incredible concept, amazingly bad execution. some of the choices were so baffling that im genuinely not sure if they were actual choices or print errors. it's like this book distilled all the cringeworthy, pretentious parts of contemporary critical theory but without any of its bite. 90% of the book is large quotations from other works (not an exaggeration). there is very little original prose, and as such there are no characters or arcs or dramatic tension or anything. im sure this book has an audience who would love it but i cannot imagine who it would be at all.
March 28, 2023
Dense and takes a lot of mental work to decipher which combines so beautifully with its theme on reflection and how language determines a culture. Discusses American imperialism in the Iraq war. Academic language -- Def takes some time to read but worth it!!
January 3, 2023
well now if THAT doesn't solve american imperialism, nothing will
May 17, 2025
This is a novel about method. There's the method of the protagonist's father about the translation (or rather non-translation) of Italian; there's the method of his brother about finding historical justice amid US permanent war; there's his own method for interpreting his brother's notebooks:
The tale itself is simple – a search for utopia (or at least a way out of the grasp of empire) leads to a form of madness (mutism):
It wavers between a senseless hope for methodical change:
And a sober evaluation of a hard reality:
At any rate, I really enjoyed reading and reflecting on this abstract, fractured and highly unusual novella. The impression I'm left with overall is something quite powerful:
Or, more directly:
"My rules were admittedly patchwork but also a successful solution to the immediate crisis of my need for another continuity of American history to assert moment to moment. I now realize this procedure need not be as desperate as I so often make it out to be. Though arduous, I do not hesitate to recommend that you commit each element of my template to memory. This will take time, but I dare to hope you will find the benefits worth the effort.
"I hasten to add that you are by no means confined in your meditations to the template I have devised. My method will prove its usefulness if it leads you to devise a different one with another set of rules of your own invention that you are able to hold constantly in memory and employ effectively. The task is always the same: to narrate without complicity your own success in refusing the permanence of American wars."
The tale itself is simple – a search for utopia (or at least a way out of the grasp of empire) leads to a form of madness (mutism):
When representations of historical justice cease to be hallucinatory, peace will occupy the silence of intervals like the smell of rain.
It wavers between a senseless hope for methodical change:
c: The intuition of a universal mutual intelligibility and therefore of a potentially universal historical justice implicit in the fact of the natural human language faculty.
And a sober evaluation of a hard reality:
Why do we still lack a popular vernacular form for the truth of the news of the exterminatory history we are living with which successfully to refuse it?
At any rate, I really enjoyed reading and reflecting on this abstract, fractured and highly unusual novella. The impression I'm left with overall is something quite powerful:
What did our mother not want lost with her death by telling Christopher this history at the very end? The truth that we belonged to a class whose responsibility for our acts lacked adequate language, adequate speech? That impunity was a legacy neither she nor we had any business believing we could honorably survive? That the truth of her complicity in the crime of refusing to help or address the harm done to two children-needed to be said out loud as a way to open the way for registering the infinite value of all lives.
Or, more directly:
III.3a: The history we are living is narrated to us as a state of historical emergency in which order itself is said to be under immediate threat. Given these conditions, we are led to believe that the violence of state power constitutes the self-evidence of its own legitimacy. Given the stakes, the appeal of empire to the right of self-defense encompasses the self-granting of quasi-legal permission to use essentially unlimited means of violent force-extending to torture, targeted assassination, and mass murder. Empire demands impunity as the sign, instrument, and self-evident legitimacy of the unlimited reach of its violence.
November 20, 2024
I don't typically write reviews here, but my God did this book frustrate me. I see what the author is going for thematically, and it could be really beautiful! The concepts of language and culture being so deeply intertwined--and what it means to lose one, and subsequently both, of those--is so multilayered and complicated. But the complicated nature of that idea does not constitute the overly wordy, deeply pretentious, and at the end of the day, utterly exhausting nature of this book. It feels like Dimock is putting words together just to make himself sound more intelligent, even though the words don't make sense together. I mean honestly, what the hell does "exclusive means of combining intervals of duration with ethically coherent continuities of expression" even mean? I have read and reread that line in the hopes of piecing something together, and yet I remain lost! And that's not even talking about how often Dimock quotes from entirely different texts (which is obnoxiously often).
But at least he's critiquing American imperialism for what little of the book is actually his own writing! Take that USA! Fuck the system or whatever.
In short, there are about a million other books that tackle those themes and ideas in different, and significantly better, ways. Go read those ones instead
Adding another little update now that I'm writing a paper about this god forsaken book: "An unsurvivable impunity of respectability" makes VERY little sense. It has taken me a solid 5 minutes to parse through the full sentence this phrase is a part of, which is frankly absurd given that it isn't even a very long sentence! All this man does in this novel is write intentionally wordy--and grammatically frustrating--sentences for no other reason than to confuse the reader and make himself sound that much smarter. Frankly, I would rather try to make sense of a Colleen Hoover novel put through several rounds of Google Translate than have to read this shit show of a novel ever again.
But at least he's critiquing American imperialism for what little of the book is actually his own writing! Take that USA! Fuck the system or whatever.
In short, there are about a million other books that tackle those themes and ideas in different, and significantly better, ways. Go read those ones instead
Adding another little update now that I'm writing a paper about this god forsaken book: "An unsurvivable impunity of respectability" makes VERY little sense. It has taken me a solid 5 minutes to parse through the full sentence this phrase is a part of, which is frankly absurd given that it isn't even a very long sentence! All this man does in this novel is write intentionally wordy--and grammatically frustrating--sentences for no other reason than to confuse the reader and make himself sound that much smarter. Frankly, I would rather try to make sense of a Colleen Hoover novel put through several rounds of Google Translate than have to read this shit show of a novel ever again.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews