Robert Indiana kept a series of illustrated journals during the late 1950s and 1960s, in which he discusses the development of his work as well as his daily life on Coenties Slip.

In his journal entry for January 2, 1962, Indiana records that the second day of the year was more exciting than the first, as the first mail of the new year brought the Museum of Modern Art press release (for the show Recent Acquisitions: Painting and. Sculpture) with Alfred H. Barr's (the museum's founding director) statement on The American Dream, I: "Because I do not understand why I like it so much, Robert Indiana’s The American Dream is for me one of the two most spellbinding paintings in the show. Its bitter humor appears again in the painter's answer to the museum’s questionnaire."

Regarding the questionnaire and the show Indiana writes: "a rather embarrassingly generous supply of quotes from that questionnaire. Of 23 new artists under 35 only 3 were of Abstract Expressionistic compulsion! This a particularly important and telling statistic. Goodbye tortured pigment! Farewell, mess!"

Indiana also records an afternoon visit by Sally Rose, who came with her husband, noting there "is little enthusiasm exuded from his part, but Sally is still enthusiastic, even though she had counted on [the] lower price I quoted [for Ballyhoo]." After they leave he called James Rosenquist, who came over for Cokes with art critic Gene Swenson. Rosenquist then left to sell a painting, and Swenson stayed to select a drawing: "my first sepia one. My gift to him for Xmas, etc."