Thoughts About Books Written in Diary Format

[Dark Muse]

I am reading Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe and I made a remark that one of the things of which I did not care for in the narrator (Moll Flanders) is that it seemed to me as if she was trying too hard to be sympathetic, or justify herself too much. So one else remarked that since the book was written as a diary they were writing only for themselves and thus would have no reason to try and be sympathetic.

This remark got me thinking on the nature of books that are written in diary format.

I cannot help but to wonder, in considering books which are written in diary format, being that the author of the work is needless to say writing with the intention of the work being read, and thus they are telling us what they want us to know about the character, is the narrator of the story than by default also self-aware of the fact that their story is going to be read?

Or should the reader act under the presumption that the narrator of the story is truly oblivious to the fact that their writing is being read, and thus we should take it as if it really were their private personal thoughts?

[OrphanPip]

The English novel is pretty new when Defoe is writing and he's experimenting with form a bit. Robinson Crusoe is presented as a found document. Rebecca is presented as a true story heard from a friend of a friend. Journal of the Plague year is presented as a historical document compiled from personal diaries.

Defoe is pretty interested in trying to present the diary format as believable, but he's just not quite as good at it as later epistolary writers. By the time Richardson and Burney come along, the form is made a lot better.

Another reason why Defoe is using this style is that it was in vogue during the period to have to publish lurid diaries or confessions, and Defoe is trying to respond directly to these kinds of novels that he disapproves of not only in terms of morality but also aesthetics.

Michael McKeon talks about this interest in terms of a neo-Aristotelian idea of the representation of truth, and an 18th century reading of this to mean that truth in prose means actual literal truth. So, Defoe would do weird things like pretend his novels were written by other people. Others like Swift and Fielding make fun of this idea by calling attention to the artifice of their prose narratives. Defoe is at a point where people are trying to make a case for the novel as a higher form of prose art, and part of that is these kind of awkward prodding moves towards what will eventually become formal realism by the end of the 18th century.

So, Defoe would probably want the ideal reader to pretend that they believe in the documentary status of the diaries, but not all novelists who use this style want that. Fielding uses the format as a joke in Shamela, where he has his protagonist vigorously writing letters while Mr. Boobie is trying to seduce her. A lot of amatory stuff, like Aphra Behn's Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister, is more interested in the pretence of intimacy and the potential private letters give for rationalizing characters expressing overflowing emotions towards each other.

Later epistolary writers get better at faking it and making it a bit more believable.

[MarkBastable]

There are several structural problems with the diary format, from a narrative point of view.

The main one is that the narrator is telling the story 'as it happens' (as opposed to after it has happened, which is the more usual narrative position). That means that the window of the narrator's perception of events is very narrow, and restricts the authors's options for - for instance - foreshadowing. It's difficult to credibly get into a diary any events or details which, though not significant at the time they happen, will turn out to be significant later. Also, the narrator has to live in a narrow 'perception window' too - you can't have an emotional or experiential 'bleed' from future events, which is another sort of foreshadowing.

On top of that you've got all the other viewpoint restrictions that come from using a first-person narrator - none are unsurmountable of course, and can often be used to the advantage of the story, but they're intrinsic to structure.

I think that all these restrictions of time, viewpoint and emotional range are the reason that diary novels tend to be episodic and picaresque.