Book excerpt: "I seem to live: the New York diaries, 1950-2011 is Jonas Mekas's key literary work. The first volume of this magnum opus, covering the period from 1950-1969, appears posthumously in the year of his death. It stands on an equal fooing with his cinematic oeuvre, which he initially developed together with his brother Adolfas after their arrival in New York. In 1954, the two brothers founded Film Culture magazine, and a weekly column for The Village Voice. It was in this period that his writing, films, and unflagging commitment to art began to establish him as a pioneer of American avant-garde cinema and the barometer of the New York art scene. An assemblage of Jonas's diaries from this exciting period, enriched with his own personal visual material, I seem to live: the New York diaries, vol. 1, 1950-1969 reads as a moving and subjectively condensed chronology of the postwar New York underground scene, which he shaped and defended through his writings"--Page 4 of cover