The Golden Notebook

The black notebook comes to a quick end: The original intention, dividing “Source” and “Money,” has been abandoned in favor of multiple pasted-in articles from the newspapers, dated between 1955 and 1957. The final entry written by Anna notes that she has a dream “that a television film was to be made about the group of people in the Mashopi Hotel” (524). The film crew is all Black, and they are taking apart the cameras, which are also machine guns. Anna scolds the director for changing her story, but the director says that it is, in fact, everything Anna saw and wrote. Anna blames her faulty memory and decides to end the black notebook.

Again, the red notebook is also filled with newspaper articles, most of them about war and violence. Anna has marked all 679 mentions of “freedom” with a red pencil.

Again, there is only one entry written by Anna: It tells the story of a comrade from the British Communist Party named Harry. He had fought in the Spanish Civil War for his ideals; had rescued people during the air raids of World War II; kept portraits of Lenin and Trotsky on the walls of his flat; and learned to speak Russian.