When people talk about personal narrative as a literary form, there is almost always a bias toward the insights made available by hindsight. But what can you see as you are coming down the road? “Story is a chunk of life with a bend in it,” Garner has said, inviting us to consider the possibility that there’s not necessarily a direct correlation between time passed and insight gained, as if you will necessarily “know” the most about your own life at precisely the moment just before you die. You know things as you move through experience, and sometimes the fervent immediacy of this sort of knowing actually diminishes across time. Once you know how things play out, you cannot absolutely re-create all you felt inside of them: that sensation is gone for good. Garner’s diaries are full of this intimate entwining of knowing and feeling, like two lovers tangled up in the sheets of an unmade bed.