what others are to the ascetic in a community, the notebook is to the recluse
I don't quite follow here. What are "others" to the ascetic?
I would assume that an ascetic (one who practices austerity and self-denial, http://www.oed.com.ezp.slu.edu/view/Entry/11367?redirectedFrom=ascetic#eid) would eschew others, to deny themselves the (so-called) pleasures of the company of others, but would a recluse thereby eschew the notebook? Are "others" potential converts?
writing about oneself appears clearly in its relationship of complementarity with reclusion
Ong argues that writing in general (not just self-reflective writing) is isolating. In his "Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought," he says, "Writing is diaeretic. It divides and distances, and it divides and distances all sorts of things in all sorts of ways," one of which is the way the writer becomes reclusive and divided from the world when caught up in the act of thinking and writing.