dear diary; It isn't a blog.

Byline: William Norwich

The topic at dinner was diaries. Keeping them, not reading them. (Forget it! Especially not a diary found without invitation in a sibling's drawer, or a diary kept by your husband that you've just discovered under the bed. Tempting reading, perhaps; justified, no. It is an unspeakable invasion. Just ask Sophie Dahl, who had her diary passed around at boarding school.)

How did the subject of diary-writing arise at dinner? It wasn't that anyone exactly remembered the fuss lawyers for Lindsay Lohan made when she lost hers after a night of _party_going earlier this year. No. I think it might have been a London friend eager to listen to the audio diaries of former Labour cabinet member David Blunkett when they were broadcast on Channel 4. Or a piece in the September Tatler about British notables who chronicle their comings and goings. Or the recent publication of the diaries of Duff Cooper, which inspired many to reread the previously published jottings of his wife, Diana Cooper. Or that article about Brooke Astor in The New York Sun that included excerpts from the diary Mrs. Astor enthusiastically kept in her youth. Or all of the above, plus the news that the journals of the late literary arbiter Leo Lerman, titled The Grand Surprise and edited by Stephen Pascal, will be published in April by Knopf.

You start to wonder: Are your friends going home after a party and writing about you? I hope so.

Launching a diary has its appeal, in a back-to-school "social studies" sort of way. The new fall season is so decidedly afoot: There were all those events during New York Fashion Week, glittering fund-raisers like the New Yorkers for Children benefit, and private gatherings, such

as Amalia Dayan and Adam Lindemann's wedding party in Woodstock (the dress was "hippie chic and flats").

OK, so you may not be Noel Coward or Andy Warhol right off the ink pad, but you can make a start. Surely there is cognitive and therapeutic value to the undertaking. What you wore, what you heard, where you went, what you