Twenty years have passed, and Raymond Firth suggests that the book has moved over to a more central place in the literature of anthropological reflection. On the diary's initial publication in 1967, Clifford Geertz felt that the "gross, tiresome" diary revealed Malinowski as "a crabbed, self-preoccupied, hypochondriacal narcissist, whose fellow-feeling for the people he lived with was limited in the extreme." But in 1988, Geertz referred to the diary as a "backstage masterpiece of anthropology, our "The Double Helix"". Similarly in 1987, James Clifford called it "a crucial document for the history of anthropology. The Diary abundantly revealed some unpleasant aspects of Malinowski’s character".