World’s longest diary comes to an abrupt end

He spent a quarter of a century chronicling his life in five-minute segments. In his journal he faithfully recorded his reflections on God and his every visit to the lavatory. He even taped a nostril hair to its pages so that future scientists can study his DNA.

He slept for just two hours at a time so that he could record his dreams. He had three dozen ways of describing the act of urination. At his most prolific, he wrote three million words a year.

Now the Rev Robert Shields has died, aged 89, leaving a 37.5 million-word document that fills 91 boxes.

Monty Shields, 78, told The Times that his brother’s writing was helped by their father being the 1904 world champion in speed typing. “He did not spend as much time on it as you might think because he could type very fast and think very quickly and practically had a photographic memory.”

Mr Shields, a Protestant minister and teacher, died of a heart attack on October 15 at his home in Washington state. He had hoped that future historians would find his diary valuable.

He once told an interviewer: “Maybe by looking into someone’s life at that depth, every minute of every day, they will find out something about all people. I don’t know. No way to tell.”

His diary is almost 30 times longer than Samuel Pepys’s classic journal of 17th-century London, which runs to 1.25 million words. It far exceeds the colourful 21 million-word diary left by Edward Robb Ellis, an American newspaper reporter who died in 1998, aged 87, after recording his life for 70 years.

Guinness World Records does not record the longest diary, but lists a 91-year chronicle written by Colonel Ernest Loftus in Zimbabwe from 1896 to 1987. Mr Shields first started writing a diary when he was 17 to chronicle a romance, but soon gave up. He did not resume in earnest until he was 54.

He also wrote a book about a robbery that became the basis for Elvis Presley’s first film, Love Me Tender. He wrote in his thermal underwear at a desk surrounded by six electric typewriters, taking turns on each machine.

The journal contains a bewildering array of details, ranging from his blood pressure readings to every piece of junk mail he received. “It is an uninhibited diary,” he once said. “It is spontaneous. I type it as it comes and I don’t correct it and I don’t edit it.”

He had to stop typing in 1996 when he suffered a disabling second stroke; his wife soon tired of taking dictation. He donated his diary to Washington State University in 1999 on condition that it will not be read for 50 years. “Some people would say ‘Well, he’s a nut’,” he said in 1995. “Maybe I am.”

89歲的美國(guó)男子羅伯特希爾茲與世長(zhǎng)辭，留下了91箱共3750萬(wàn)字的日記。

　　在長(zhǎng)達(dá)25年的日記生涯中，羅伯特幾乎每隔5分鐘就記錄一次人生。他忠實(shí)地記錄下自己對(duì)上帝的想法以及每次上廁所的過(guò)程。他甚至在日記本中粘了根鼻毛，以便科學(xué)家日后研究其DNA。這個(gè)一天只睡兩小時(shí)的人一年最多曾寫下300萬(wàn)字。

　　身為新教牧師兼教師的羅伯特寫下的日記堪稱最長(zhǎng)，他17歲開(kāi)始寫日記，記述了當(dāng)時(shí)的一段戀情，之后不久他就停筆了，直到54歲才重新拾筆。羅伯特曾經(jīng)表示，希望自己的日記對(duì)未來(lái)歷史學(xué)家的研究有所幫助，因?yàn)橥高^(guò)一個(gè)人的日常生活，歷史學(xué)家能夠發(fā)現(xiàn)一些人類的共性。（沈珺）

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