OUR PRIVATE LIVES Journals, Notebooks and Diaries <i> edited by Daniel Halpern (Vintage: $10.95) </i>

As the title suggests, this anthology contains extracts from various personal journals, including several from people who don’t normally keep diaries but prepared something at the editor’s request. Almost all the excerpts are presented without introduction or notes, so it’s often difficult to figure out what’s going on or why anyone should be interested. Who cares what Guy Davenport thinks about circumcision? Some entries offer potentially enticing bits of gossip, but they’re all about people the reader’s never heard of. In his journal from Tangier, Paul Bowles reports: “Rodrigo has bought a falcon. When Mrabet heard this, he decided that he was going to get it away from him and began to announce his plans for teaching it to hunt.” Rodrigo? Mrabet?