Dr. Fauci and his diaries are in the news.

When I discovered that 478 pages of them are available to read online, I decided to take a look. It’s not that I’m particularly interested in the arguments about the origins of coronavirus, which Paul Rand and various Republicans seem to be making theatre of around the person of the doctor. What drew my attention was criticism of Dr. Fauci’s mentions of his overwhelming celebrity in the midst of the pandemic. Bits like this, for example, from Forbes:

“In a May 2020 entry, Fauci wrote the “situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable,” saying he may be “the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable person in the world,” citing a front-page Washington Post article and magazine profiles about him. “Press still hot and heavy about me. Multiple stories per day directly or indirectly involving me,” Fauci wrote in April 2020, also noting in June 2020 he was “invited to appear on Dancing with the Stars – no thanks!” Fauci also wrote of the various merchandise bearing his name and face that popped up during the height of his fame, which he said included “bottle openers, magnets and mugs” as well as more bizarre items like “prayer candles depicting ‘St. Fauci’” and a replica of his high school basketball jersey. “The ‘swag’ around me is getting really ridiculous,” Fauci wrote, adding, “Geeeez!! I do not like this one bit.”

As the keeper of a diary/journal myself, I felt myself a little defensive on the man’s behalf. For one thing, it doesn’t sound like he was that comfortable with the fame, though admittedly, he seemed to enjoy meeting interesting and famous people and mentioned as much. Who wouldn’t? Are these lines really evidence of overweening pride, in the light of his long contribution and career? Second, a diary is, by its very nature, a fair bit of me-me-me. Nor do I see sentences like “Amazing day!” and “Stock market crashing!” with their attendant exclamation points as especially cringe-worthy, as one pundit writer does. Goodness, people, have none of you kept diaries?!

Anyway, I dived in and read the first two months of the diaries, January and February 2020, which I admit, is hardly a large sampling. But it’s enough to say it’s fascinating, actually, and what even these two months document, in quite some detail (perhaps with a book in back of mind) was that one acts and reacts only to what one has and knows in the moment. There are endless meetings and consultations, there are lists of names and numbers and reports coming in from everywhere, there are requests from media to explain what’s going on, there is the president to advise, there are news conferences. And does he occasionally mention compliments he gets? Yes, he does. Even the president, initially, addressed his questions only to Dr. Fauci and praised him and Dr. Fauci noted as much. Did he also feel flattered at times? Well, I suppose he did, though he expressed plenty of frustration later. But what I see, in my brief reading so far, is a man busy at the very tasks he’s been given to do, trying — with the help of others — to guide the country and not panic it, and to lead in crucial and really complex questions of containment and mitigation and everything else as the unknown was only gradually revealing itself.

On this further line of defense/defensivenss, just for the fun of it I looked at the same two months in my diary. Completely not-famous me, that is. But what would you think, if you read it? I mention news events now and then, the killing of Soleimani, the impeachment trial of president Trump, the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant. But mostly it’s about what’s going on in my small world. And since my novel All That Belongs had come out the previous year, I wrote a sentence like this, “I continue to get nice things said about ATB, which is gratifying” and I might quote such nice things when they came in now and then. I wrote down a really lovely complimentary note sent me by one of my children too.

This is what one does in a diary. Things that others say, good or bad, impact one’s life and if it’s encouraging, you’re encouraged, so you note it. A little ego scratch to be sure. There can be obsessiveness about this, of course, but if the quotes pulled out by his critics about Dr. Fauci’s mentions so far are the best representation of the apparently inflated state of his ego, well, I’m not buying it.

But back to the main point, the point any diary makes, which is that we have no idea at the moment of writing where we are in the ongoing narrative of our lives. Nor, depending on what we record on any given day, quite apart from all we may not get around to or leave out, can we gauge the cumulative effect of such a record. Elizabeth Outka (“How Pandemics Seep into Literature” Apr. 8, 2020, Paris Review newsletter) stated this well in the early stages of the pandemic, and I copied it into my own journal. It says something very true about that time, but also, I think, about what a diary will eventually demonstrate. It’s an indispensable source for later, but is never more than human, never more than partial, never more than one specific day with its specific mood that day.

“One’s reality doesn’t simply shift in a pandemic; it becomes radically uncertain—indeed, uncertainty is the reality. The unpredictability of the COVID-19 virus and all we don’t know about it means we have no idea where we are in the story or even what story we are in. Is this the first wave of something even deadlier to come? Have we reached the top of the curve? What’s the scope of the tragedy? Is the economy the real story? What do we think we know now that may prove fatally wrong?” Also, the invisibility of the enemy, and contagion guilt. And, last sentences: “Whether in illness or in observation, our own bodies are busy now. They are recording our pandemic, setting in place the reverberations that will echo into our future.”