Chekhov’s Mistess

Behind the Scenes at the Rake’s Progress

The Wazee Journal interviews OPTR in a surprisingly lengthy interview with revelations of the real life of a litblogger.

On starting his blog:

I just decided that I was reading all these people, I was staying up until odd hours of the night, and I guess I just felt I had something I wanted to say, or I wanted to hear myself talk, or I wanted to jump into the debate and talk to these people. In grad school I was having drunken discussions about Cormac McCarthy at 3:30 in the morning in some guy’s apartment while he’s smoking Dorals and making cheese omelets. In Santa Fe I was around lots of smart people, but they were lawyers, and they weren’t really interested in talking about Cormac McCarthy at 3:30 in the morning, whereas I was.

On how to do it (coming from one of the funniest guys in litblogosphere):

It helps to be funny. I think that most blogs have some sort of humorous aspect to them or a humorous tone. That helps as a hook. I try and grab the interesting part out of the article and write kind of a hook, give you the good part, and then maybe go off on a joke. You know, try and start with a silly pun or some sort of reference to music or literature. It wasn’t intentional. This is just the way that it came out, but it just happens that I cleave to a formula, and that’s just my formula that’s been developing naturally.

On Sex and blogging:

She’s very supportive. I think she’s mostly happy that I’m not languishing, that I’m doing something of value, writing reviews. Really the fact that I’m writing at all. But these days she’s much busier than me. She’s working such ludicrous hours, and I’m often doing this after she’s gone to bed. My high time is about 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. I just stay up and go to sleep at 4 a.m. Just get a glass of bourbon and sit down at the computer. That’s usually how it gets done, it’s not very sexy. It’s just a guy in his basement, really.

The Wazee Journal also offers a brief guide to litblogs, with a lot of regular reads listed and a couple of new ones (to me) to check out.

Read widely, think well, and write often

comments

The extended conversational style of the OPTR interview reinforces my sense of litblogs being primarily informal communication attracting like-minded folk, rather than pseudo-journalism or self-publishing. “Informal” is by no means used in a pejorative sense, in fact constitutes the appeal: being able to “drop in” to find out what others are reading, thinking, and how they express themselves, with the option of adding to the exchange. The hunger for this kind of connection in our corporate-media culture is obvious, and while it is heartening to find links to so many literate people “out there”, I admit to feeling sometimes besotted with reading and the burgeoning amount of text on the internet, want to get away from the screen and wish there were a real meeting place rather than just a virtual one. Does anyone “out there” have a sense that the blossoming of litblogs has had a corresponding revival of coffeehouse discussions? tearoom debates? or are we still limited to dealing with each other through this sophisticated medium, articulate but voiceless?  Do litbloggers, e.g., connect with alternative community radio broadcasts? overlap with indie film-makers? It would be interesting to see where this takes us . . . certainly I’m using eye-drops more than ever before after so much time on-screen.

    – Norma (08/08  at  07:03 PM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: August 05, 2005
• Filed Under:
  Litbloggers & Blog Floggers

• Comments:1
• Links to this Post: Technorati

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