Jonas Mekas' diaries have an aching honesty, puckish humor and quiet nobility of character. Many readers curious about the early years of this seminal avant-garde filmmaker will discover here a much more universal story: that of the emigrant who can never go back, and whose solitariness in the New World is emblematic of the human condition. I particularly liked the sections set in New York City, which convey the rapture and loneliness of a young man who has just escaped the worst nightmare of the twentieth century, only to discover the lesson of what Freud called 'ordinary unhappiness' in the great metropolis. This is a lyrical, essential spiritual anthropology.