I Read Diaries

But only ones written by dead people

When I was about 12, I had a book called Who’s Reading Darcy’s Diary? in which Darcy’s diary goes missing at school and she’s frantic about it because she wrote about how cute the new boy was. I don’t remember much about the book, but I’m sure I read it because even back then, diaries fascinated me.

Not only do I have thousands of pages of journal entries myself, but I love reading any diary I can get ahold of. For the record, that isn’t very many, since I don’t read anything without express permission. But give me a historical collection of journal entries, or a filled-in journal book of someone who probably has no use for it now, and I can’t get into it fast enough.

In fact, what do you know? I’m reading exactly those two kinds of diaries right now!

The first is a collection of journal entries by James Boswell¹ in 1764 when he was taking a Grand Tour of Europe at age 24. He was a Scottish noble whose father wanted him to go into law, which Boswell really, really didn’t want to do; so at this stage of his life, he’s stretching this tour of Europe as long as he possibly can. He’s a young rich white man whose major preoccupations are: 1. Debating the nature of God and free will; 2. Depression and how to deal with it²; 3. Women and whether they’re in love with him; 4. Meeting very important people. The collection gives a glimpse into what was important (or not) not only to him, but to the society he moved in.³

The second diary is one I found in the thrift store just yesterday. I routinely check notebooks and journal books in thrift stores for any forgotten notes within; so when I opened this one and found it completely full of handwriting, I was thrilled. I’m still not sure why they decided to sell it, but I figured that I’d treat it with the care it deserves so I bought it. It was written in 2001 by a 52-year-old woman, name unknown. Her 27-year marriage to Peter seems happy, and she writes proudly of her college-age daughter, Bonnie, and her high-school son, Thomas. (I’ve changed all the names, by the way, simply as good internet policy.) They appear to live somewhere out West. So far her diary is concerned with finding a new job (since her old company got “dot-commed,” as she said); whether her two-time bout with breast cancer will recur; and her day-to-day life with family and the dogs. In a very interesting cultural moment, her diary includes September 11, 2001. It was something of a shock to come upon that entry and realize that she wasn’t writing it in memorial, but on the very day it happened. The diary runs all the way to 2004, so I’m settling in for an exciting time.

Or, well, a pretty mundane time, if we’re honest. As one friend put it, My thought about all this is basically “BORING.” Because most people are really boring. Yes, fair point. But! I am fascinated by what people take the time to notice and record, and what else simply passes by. History is full of big events, but it happens to the everyday person. And that’s whose thoughts and lives I want to understand.

Oh, and about Darcy’s diary in that book I read — I do recall that it got picked up with a stack of other books and put away on a shelf. So in the end, nobody was reading Darcy’s diary.

But if anybody did, I bet it would be me.

1. Before I started reading this collection (copyright 1928 and 1956), all I knew about Boswell was that he wrote a book about Samuel Johnson, whom I also knew nothing about, having not read Boswell’s book about him. Well, it turns out that there’s lots to be known about Boswell, because he kept journals for decades, even copying in letters that he wrote or received. I found out that people know so much about Boswell that they call themselves “Boswellians,” not to mention using the term “Boswellania.” To be completely honest, I’ve been too afraid to look further into the life and writings of this man. It looks like a fandom that would put K-pop to shame.

2. It seems that Boswell suffered from real depression and struggled a lot to overcome it. But is also seems that “melancholia” was quite a fad among the upper class, who loved to talk of how terrible they felt and whether they wanted to end their lives or not.

3. He’s an entertaining writer, but my opinion of him is permanently soured after the shockingly casual way he talked about raping a lower class woman, an act he feels rather sheepish about as if he’d been caught masturbating, but then never thinks of again.