I've Got a Great Book to Recommend...

Summary

Armstrong & Getty On Demand

Episode: "I've Got a Great Book to Recommend..."

Date: March 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on a fascinating literary discovery: "The Inman Diary," an unusually extensive and candid journal by Arthur Inman. The hosts dig into the diary's bizarre backstory, its author’s obsession with immortality through writing, and sample its raw, unfiltered testimonies. Alongside lively banter and classic Armstrong & Getty humor, the conversation explores broader themes of confession, history, voyeurism, and the boundaries of readable documentation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Book Recommendations and Bizarre Literary Endeavors

• The episode kicks off with the host teasing an unusually lengthy book recommendation — running joke about how long it would take to finish it.
• They compare the daunting length to famously dense books like James Joyce’s "Ulysses":

  "I've been working on that for nine months and I haven't finished it yet." (Co-host, 01:16)
  "But Ulysses is a pamphlet you get at your doctor's office compared to this book." (Host, 01:20)

2. Automation in Dairy Farming (Brief Side Topic)

• Co-host mentions Wisconsin dairy farms turning to robots after a crackdown on undocumented workers, boosting efficiency:

  "One farm now ... produces three times more milk per worker now because of the robots." (Co-host, 01:28)

• Short discussion on economics, minimum wage impacts, and technology adoption.

3. The Inman Diary — A True Oddity in Literature

• Host introduces "The Inman Diary" — highlighted by Ted Gioia’s article, "The Strangest Book in Harvard Library."
• Arthur Inman: A reclusive, semi-invalid man who spent most of his life in a dark room, but wrote a 17-million-word diary (25 times the Bible’s length) across 155 volumes from 1919-1960.

  "What could Arthur Inman do in the 20th century that hadn't already been done before? Adding to the challenge, Inman had practically nothing to write, or so it seemed." (Host, 05:42)
  "Even recluses like Proust and Pynchon are gadabouts by comparison." (Host quoting Gioia, 06:52)

• The hosts joke about the tedium of such a diary and how it contrasts with the author’s quest for literary immortality.

4. The ‘Talkers’: Crowdsourced Confessions

• Twist: Inman placed classified ads offering to pay strangers a dollar an hour to come and tell him their life stories.

  "He took ads in the newspaper offering to hire talkers who would tell him the wildest and most intimate details of their lives ..." (Host, 08:03)
  "A diary with more than 1,000 characters ... each striving with one another to provide the most compelling, uncensored, perfectly honest narratives of their lives." (Host, 08:15)

• This unique approach makes the diary a compendium of shocking, uncensored, and varied testimonies from across society.

5. Creepy Aspects and Editorial Warnings

• Inman’s behavior is described as often inappropriate and exploitative; he’d sometimes have sexual encounters with his 'talkers.'

  "By any definition, he was a creepy guy whose behavior violated all reasonable norms." (Host, 09:38)
  "His massive journal quote is the autobiography of a warped and deeply troubled man whose aberrations call for psychiatric probing." (Host quoting Inman’s editor, 09:54)

• Hosts speculate that AI might be the only way to feasibly abridge the monumental text for a modern audience.

6. The Diary’s Unfiltered Content and Modern Accessibility

• Hosts discuss the diary’s potential to offend modern sensibilities, with the host offering a tongue-in-cheek content warning:

  "If you're the kind of person who needs a trigger warning, proceed no further." (Host, 12:19)

• They note volumes are available in highly abridged editions (about 592 pages) and locate them on Amazon.

  "There are volumes you can buy. The Inman Diary, a Public and private confession." (Co-host, 12:32)
  "I see one here from 96. It's a bridge down to ... 592 pages." (Guest, 13:59)

7. Sample Excerpts: A Window into the Past

• Host shares eye-opening selections from the diary, including a story from a piano player living a “fast life,” describing experiences with prostitutes, drug use, scrapes with police, and a stint in Bellevue Hospital:

  "'I was making 17 a week. ... I knew where the red light district was, so I went there…'" (Host reading Inman Diary, 14:19)
  "I saw a streetcar running off the tracks and heading straight for me, I guess I screamed, a cop grabbed me, I socked him, he socked me, Then he takes me to the psychopathic ward at Bellevue Hospital. What a place. ..." (Host reading Inman Diary, 15:00)

• The tone is a mix of astonishment and dark amusement at the unvarnished, confessional storytelling.

8. Reflection and Closing Remarks

• Both hosts are intrigued and surprised that they hadn’t heard of the diary before, expressing genuine curiosity about reading more.

  "That's pretty good, that's pretty good. Wow." (Co-host, 16:11)
  "The Inman Diaries. I'll check it out." (Co-host, 16:17)

• The episode ends with a short joke about another family story left tantalizingly unfinished:

  "To tell the story of my dad squatting over a campfire and there were some high pitched yells ... Anyway, it's a good story, well, short but compelling. No, no, I, I'm not gonna tell the whole thing. Well, I guess that's it." (Host, 16:23)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the diary’s scale:

  "Inman wrote some 17 million words and filled 155 volumes, now housed in Harvard's Houghton Library. That's roughly 25 times as long as the Bible." (Host, 07:04)

• On Inman’s method:

  "He took ads in the newspaper offering to hire talkers who would tell him the wildest and most intimate details of their lives." (Host, 08:03)

• On the diary’s explicitness:

  "If you aren't offended by Inman's dealings with his talkers, you will invariably find his opinions on politics, society, religion, race and a host of other matters reprehensible in whole or in part." (Host, 12:11)

• On abridgement:

  "They gotta have AI abridged because it would take too long for any human, obviously." (Co-host, 09:59)
  "It's split into two pieces, it looks like, from a darkened room." (Guest, 12:47)

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Timestamps by Topic

• 01:04 – Book recommendation joke, lead-in to main subject
• 01:28 – Automation on Wisconsin dairy farms (brief aside)
• 05:07 – Introduction to Arthur Inman and the Inman Diary
• 08:03 – Inman's crowdsourced ‘talkers’ and diary methodology
• 09:38 – Creepy and controversial aspects of Inman's life and work
• 12:17 – Modern relevance, trigger warning, and how to find the diary
• 13:00-16:11 – Excerpts from the Inman Diary
• 16:23 – Closing banter and cliffhanger family anecdote

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Conclusion

This episode showcases Armstrong & Getty’s blend of irreverent humor and genuine curiosity as they dissect "the strangest book in any library." Their discussion of Arthur Inman's monumental confession raises intriguing questions about history, voyeurism, and the limits of written self-revelation — while keeping listeners laughing and wondering what other bizarre literary gems might be out there. If you’re interested in the eccentric, disturbing, and deeply human corners of history, "The Inman Diary" just might be for you.

Transcript

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[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

I've got a great book I want to recommend. You got to get started reading it though. It's going to take you 50 years. It's one More Thing.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Oh, geez.

[Howie Mandel]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

One More Thing.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Is it Ulysses? Because I think I've been working on that for nine months and I haven't finished it yet.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

But Ulysses is a pamphlet you get at your doctor's office compared to this book. Stay with us.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

It's a business card. I'm going to talk about this on Tuesday's Armstrong and Getty radio show. I don't think we've ever done a tease in the One More Thing podcast for the radio show, but just came across this. So when they started cracking down on illegals up in Wisconsin, where you got a lot of dairy farm stuff like that, a variety of dairy farmers started getting robots and you got one farm now that produces three times more milk per worker now because of the robots they hired doing a bunch of work on the dairy farm.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, yeah. It's achieved the same thing. An artificially high minimum wage would, I suppose. Gotta hope you don't convinces people, hey, it's worth it to invest in the technology now. Let's do it.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Gotta hope you don't get your teeth pulled off. Nobody wants that.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Catch your tit in a ringer, as the old saying used to go.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Made Katie wince enough.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Very good. That would be very painful.

[Podcast Guest or Contributor (likely Katie)]

Yes, I think so.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Nobody does laundry anymore with that sort of system where you're actually putting clothes through a wringer to dry them out. We have dryers now, so the chance of getting your breasticle caught in a ringer is very low.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

It's much lower, certainly. Apparently back in the day that that saying was popularized, women didn't have enough like multiple shirts to throw one on during the process of the ringing.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Good God, that would hurt. Oh, was that a regular occurrence? If my grandma were still alive, I'd

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

ask her because she had laundry like that regular enough.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Be an awkward question to ask my grandma.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Yeah, agreed.

[Podcast Guest or Contributor (likely Katie)]

Any, any, Any. I can only imagine it's not probably not as bad as the balls, but I mean any incident with the boob is just not fair.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

If you get your testicles caught in the ringer, you're doing your laundry in a weird way.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

I get more leverage this way.

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[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

I find this so interesting and I would love to. I am going to dig into this a little more. The article is Entitled the Strangest Book in Harvard Library, but it's the strangest book in any library. And this piece was written by Ted Gioia, who I love. I'd never heard of the Inman diary. Jack, had you ever heard of that? You're very literary. He has not, folks. Katie, the Inman diary. No, but I like how Jack just walked away. I've lost interest myself. I feel like I've heard of it,

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

but I don't remember what it is.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Yeah, So I just walked off. On the opening page, the book's editor makes a bold claim. This work has no counterpart in any literature that I am aware of. The author, Arthur Inman, was obsessed with winning some sort of fame or immortality, but he really had no way to do it. As he himself wrote, the only way for him to win fame, perhaps even immortality, would be to write a diary unlike any ever written. It would contain the kind of information, information that he had looked for and never found in other diaries, which Joia points out seems like an impossible goal because there are many, many dozens, if not hundreds of diaries, from Augustine to Rousseau to whatever, Samuel Pepys, Right. Who had famous diaries that are fascinating relics of their time. So what could Arthur Inman do in the 20th century that hadn't already been done before? Adding to the challenge, Inman had practically nothing to write, or so it seemed. He was a semi invalid who spent most of his life in a darkened room.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Oh, geez.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Even recluses like Proust and Pynchon are gadabouts by comparison, writes Joya.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Wow. He spent his whole life in a darkened room and then kept a diary, And I'm supposed to read it?

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Brace yourself. Yet Inman wrote some 17 million words and filled 155 volumes, now housed in Harvard's Houghton Library. That's roughly 25 times as long as the Bible. He devoted 40 years to this project from 1919, and he continued working on it until shortly after his death in 1960. Before his death, Rather, he didn't work on it after his death before, in 1960.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

June 6, 1928. Well, sitting in the room again, same

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

dark room I referred to in yesterday's post, and for that matter, the day before.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

You ever wonder about getting your tit in a ringer?

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

I bought myself a ringer. And as much as I cranked and pressed my chest against anyway, no weirdest thing happened. Got my testicle caught. I thought I had more leverage.

[Howie Mandel]

I was squatting down to get a

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

good, firm footing, and, well, you'll never guess what happened next. Back to the actual diary. Here's where it gets crazy. So here's the twist that actually got him the immortality in a way that he was looking for. He took ads in the newspaper offering to hire talkers who would tell him the wildest and most intimate details of their lives. The end result was a diary with more than 1,000 characters, each striving with one another to provide the most compelling, uncensored, perfectly honest narratives of their lives.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

That is fascinating. There needs to be an abridged version of this, though.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Oh, yes, please. Yes, please. Abridging it would take 30 years. That crowdsourced approach turned the Inman journals into a compendium of confessions unlike anything ever written down before.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Sure.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

So he paid his talkers, as he called them, a dollar an hour, which, you know, depending on when in the project, it was, you know, at least enough money to show up. Particularly because a lot of these people he talked to were kind of down and outers. He often went beyond listening, having sexual relations with some of the women who took the job. What, by any definition, come hang out

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

in my dark room? No.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

And he'd say, you know, he'd have them spill their sexual secrets or whatever. And I'm guessing he'd say, you know, this is kind of getting me horned up. How about you? And if they said, yeah, kind of,

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

you know, that's a good line.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Yeah. Well, he was Frank. Frank Mann in them. But by any definition, he was a creepy guy whose behavior violated all reasonable norms. Even his editor, Daniel Aaron, admits that this disturbed individual's massive journal quote is the autobiography of a warped and deeply troubled man whose aberrations call for psychiatric probing.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

That's super interesting. They gotta have AI abridged because it would take too long for any human, obviously. Oh, you can feed that into AI and have it abridged somehow and turn it into a, you know, a manageable 800 pages or something.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Or you'd have to hire a team of 25, you know, like grad students in editing or something, I don't know. He often closed the diaries with the send off I wish I were dead.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Wow.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Yet he also saw himself in a heroic light, dreaming of the posthumous fame his massive diary would eventually bring him. Well, see you tomorrow.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Wish I was dead.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

His talkers were extraordinarily trusting and candid. Perhaps the darkened room and the quasi anonymity of the setting made it feel like an actual confessional. Maybe it's even simpler. People wanted to reveal their darkest secrets and still do as sites. Somebody saying this and will seek out settings where it can happen. Or perhaps the reality is more banal and tragic. These folks simply needed the cash and Inman was the only person paying for their secrets. Sometimes Inman's talkers showed up with stories to tell, but if they were reticent, he would immediately start probing. Here is his account of a first meeting with Mrs. Haviland never brought back for a second session because she was too, quote, unquote sweet. I asked her how old she was, how long she'd been married, whether she loved her husband, whether he loved her, whether she loved her son or husband best, why she'd been to the hospital lately, whether she used contraceptives, how much salary her husband made, whom her ancestors were, how she budgeted her money, if she believed in God, how many friends she had, what did she look forward to in life, what sort of childhood she'd had, Was she calm or emotional? Did she read like music, the movies and so on? Most of her answers I believed, some I didn't. And let's see.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

So is this available anywhere? Is it online or anything?

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

That is a good question. I can dig into that. I don't recall seeing that. I read the article, but it was a couple of weeks ago and I just been holding on to it. He writes, I doubt that Inman Diary could still be published by Harvard University Press nowadays. There's just too much in its pages, rather to upset, dismay, shock and appall. And if you aren't offended by Inman's dealings with his talkers, you will invariably find his opinions on politics, society, religion, race and a host of other matters reprehensible in whole or in part. Well, let me make clear.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Go ahead.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

If you're the kind of person who needs a trigger warning, proceed no further.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Wow. Well, yeah, Guy, I would read this sort of thing for that sort of stuff. That's what you're looking for.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

And he says, as a historian, it's just absolutely, I imagine, valuable.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

So I'm looking at Amazon, number one bookseller in the world. The Inman Diary, a public and private confession. Confession by Arthur C. Inman. There are volumes you can buy. The Inman Diary, a Public and private confession.

[Podcast Guest or Contributor (likely Katie)]

Yeah, it's split into two pieces, it

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

looks like, from a darkened room. The Inman Diary, huh.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

I'll have to look into this more,

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

but it's got to be way, way, way abridged, obviously.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Right, which is good. But they mentioned he mentions Inman's talkers didn't seem very interested in self censorship and many clearly savored the opportunity to tell their raw stories without fear of consequences or judgment. They're a strange assortment. But where else will you find a book written in the 1930s where, on a single page you encounter a firsthand account of pimping, prostitution, bootlegging, bribing, drug addiction, homosexuality, rape, illegal gambling, drunkenness, police violence, a stint in Bellevue, and even glimmerings of a philosophy of life. The appearance of a skilled musician who tickles the ivories is just an extra. Do you doubt me? Here's an extract from the testimony of Anthony abruzzo of age 24. It's a whole page that's really interesting. I'm.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

You know, maybe I heard about it last year and I forgot I'm capable of that, but I'm surprised I didn't know about this. And I'm going to look into it. The volumes that are available.

[Podcast Guest or Contributor (likely Katie)]

Yeah, I see one here from 96. It's a bridge down to. It's down to 592 pages.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

God, that's doable. Wow.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Seven million words or whatever he said it was.

[Podcast Guest or Contributor (likely Katie)]

Yeah.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Making 500 pages out of it.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Hit me with a link that link, if you would, Katie. I mean, I could replicate your search, but why? All right, let me just hit you with one paragraph.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

Okay.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

From the 1930s. I was making 17. This is the piano player. I was making 17 a week. I hired a room one day. I decided to find out what women was all about. I knew where the red light district was. He. It's a black guy, and he, like, writes it in the dialect. So I'll just read what's in front of me. I knew where the red light district was, so I went there. I got myself a Southern girl. She showed me what it was all about. I took to it like a fish to water.

[Bleacher Report Advertiser]

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[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

She was a country girl come to New York to make a success. She'd hit the bumps and landed up a prostitute. She was 23. She tried working for a boss but didn't like it none. So it was on her own. She was a nice baby. She took dope and wanted me to, but I told her no dice. She didn't make me pay. Three other prostitutes I had did, though. Then there was a stenographer. It wasn't a matter of sex with her. I just liked her. Oh, yes. There was a housemaid in the Bronx. She didn't cost me nothing. As a matter of fact, I borrowed money from her and never paid it back. Wow. Then he gets into all the rest of it. You know, I'm going to hit you with one more bit. I became more and more of an inebriate. One night a taxi hit me, Then I got to seeing things. I saw a streetcar running off the tracks and heading straight for me, I guess I screamed, a cop grabbed me, I socked him, he socked me, Then he takes me to the psychopathic ward at Bellevue Hospital. What a place. I was there for two weeks. They gave me ether and alcohol to cure me. You never seen such place as them. Two wards, drunk, sprawling on the floor on mattresses, drunks trembling and seeing things and having DTS and losing up their guts, guards beating up drunks, insane men in straight jackets and insane men out of straight jackets and moaning and hollering and a shouting. Honestly, Mr. Inman, it was the first time in my life that I had ever given thought to my fellow creatures as individuals. Hitherto I had just lived, done no thinking whatsoever. It was also the first time I had ever given my thought to my future. Geez, I did some thinking.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

That's pretty good, that's pretty good. Wow.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

The Inman Diaries.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

I'll check it out, check it out.

[Podcast Host (likely Jack or Katie)]

To tell the story of my dad squatting over a campfire and there were some high pitched yells and. Well, anyway, it's a good story, well, short but compelling. No, no, I, I'm not gonna tell the whole thing. Well, I guess that's it.

[Podcast Co-host (likely Jack or Katie)]

What kind of cliffhanger is that?

[Howie Mandel]

What the hell.