DIARIES ARE curious things. They are private records, but when they document the lives of public figures, those divisions become murky. In the case of Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood (1904-86), whose diaries exceed a million words-hundreds of thousands of which have already been published-they can be downright damning. …

AMONG THE WRITERS whose names are associated with the Beat Generation-Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and the rest-perhaps only Paul Bowles is destined to transcend that association and secure his own place as an artist of the late 20th century. …

SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD Anamika Sharma is an overly earnest, overachieving high school girl in a hurry. As the head prefect at her academically rigorous and slightly progressive high school in Delhi, India, she’s respected by most of her peers and teachers. …

JT LeRoy’s new novella Harold’s End has the shape and feel of a personal diary or journal. Small in size and squarish in shape, the book sports a black cover (under the dust jacket) and, inside, the text is illustrated throughout with drawings of the story’s characters by Australian artist Cherry Hood. …

[Lou] Harrison came out as gay during the McCarthy era and immediately began attending the early meetings of SIR, the Society for Individual Rights, in San Francisco. He took poetry workshops from the poet Robert Duncan and, at SIR meetings, taught Ned Rorem how to do the Charleston. Duncan’s 1944 essay “The Homosexual in Society” touched on feelings of self-deprecation and alienation.