From heraldscotland.com
In the age of social media, do people still write up diaries? Have diaries been superseded by blogs, Twitter, or whatever it’s called now?
Social media has changed how those so inclined, record their everyday lives and observations. When things were entered nightly in a wee book with a William Morris cover, people tended to be a bit precious about its contents. Someone reading your diary felt like a violation. If you came across someone’s diary, you hesitated before opening; it might reveal what the writer really thought about you.
Samuel Richardson’s 18th century heroine Pamela, goes to extraordinary lengths to keep her letters and journal private – sewn into her underwear. In contrast, present-day bloggers and tweeters incontinently post every mundane thought and triviality.
Of course, the cautious diarist will stick with paper and ink. It’s likely to be more enduring. Putting your deeds and thoughts into the public domain runs the risk of trolling, a pile-on or cancelling. Your future can be behind you, if something written in the pub ten years earlier, resurfaces on social media at an inopportune moment.
I’ve never successfully kept a diary. I’ve tried often enough, but never got beyond the middle of January. The discipline and stamina of inveterate diarists like Tony Benn are remarkable. He estimated his uncut diaries amounted to 16 million words. It was surprising he had time to do anything else.
My problem is a really dull day-to-day life. The diaries of someone who breakfasts every day on Weetabix are never going to be riveting. Nonetheless, I’m a keen reader of other’s diaries, especially those in the public eye. There’s no shortage. We have a rich heritage of insightful diarists, stretching from Pepys and Boswell through to Alan Clark and Alan Bennett.
Yet, why do those living relatively ordinary lives keep diaries? Possibly, they find daily recording and reflection to be therapeutic, imposing calm and order on private and public events. They provide a safety valve, allowing writers to let off steam privately and harmlessly.
Diaries, including the fictional, can provide commentaries on our lives and times, two of the best examples being Bridget Jones’s Diary and the eight volumes of Sue Townsend’s brilliant Adrian Mole series. From the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (1982) through to The Prostate Years (2009), Ms Townsend charted Adrian’s path through life, while, at the same time, capturing the essential meanness of the Thatcher years.
The diarist writing for publication is a different kettle of fish. It raises the fundamental question whether someone with an eye to publication during her or his lifetime can be entirely honest. Politicians shamefully use published diaries to burnish tarnished reputations. Alistair Campbell’s book The Blair Years, for example, is probably nearer to the truth than would have been the case had they been written by the great pretender himself.
Enoch Powell was an honourable exception. He never kept a diary, memorably describing political diary writing as “returning to one’s vomit.” Even the best placed public and political figures can fail to recognise the significance of events happening around them. The entry in Louis XVI’s diary for 14 July 1789 (the day the Bastille was stormed) is allegedly a single word, “Rien.”
Most political diaries are excruciatingly dull, an exercise in self-justification. Alan Clark was a refreshing exception. His three volumes are racy and entertaining, making no attempt to airbrush his (considerable) failings. In a 1950s Ealing comedy, Terry Thomas would have classed Clark as a “cad and a bounder”. Nevertheless, one can’t help warming to someone who dismisses Tory grandee, Michael Heseltine, as the sort of upstart “who buys his own furniture.”
The two volumes of A Prison Diary by another cad and bounder, Jeffrey Archer, are similarly free from airbrushing. Both Clark and Archer would have agreed with Oscar Wilde who said of his own diaries, “One should always have something sensational to read on the train.”
Let’s hope the best days of conventional diaries are not behind us. Otherwise, to echo the despairing final entry in comedian Kenneth William’s diary, “Oh, what’s the bloody point?”
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23735094.doug-marr-keeping-diary-thing-past/
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