Chekhov’s Mistess

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May 2007

More Litbloggers and Blog Floggers

 

I’ve been more quiet than usual during the most recent spate of condescension aimed at bloggers. I have been reading it all and taking in all the responses, and wondering when it will end. Not, I suppose, before I moderate my panel next week at BEA on book reviewing and blogging.

The fact is that I couldn’t take Shannon Byrne seriously when she so tritely called bloggers “parasitic microorganisms”, because she or her co-horts at Little, Brown send books to bloggers in hopes of attention. I can only assume she didn’t really mean it because that would make her a hypocrite as well as a dullard.

But I do take Richard Schickel seriously; he’s an established critic and has a vested interest in the state of book reviewing. There must be something to what he’s saying. My inclination after reading these attacks (after lashing out!) is to try to write better so that at some point these people will have no fodder. But that’s kind of silly of me. Blogs are what they are and as good as they can be, they’re nothing like newspapers and never will be. In some cases, as we’ve seen, blogs act as a farm team for mainstream publications, but in most cases, they’re something quite different.

Schickel is right when he says that “not everyone should be a critic” even as petty as it was for him to call out a blogger because of that person’s previous day job, about which I might remind him of some of the day jobs one Mr. William Faulkner had while writing some of the greatest literature this country has ever seen. But everyone has a right to be a critic and few who do it have specialized training. Surely, a “love of reading” is not enough, but how do critics get “disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge”? They write. They think. They read. They write. They write. And that’s where the similarities begin. Curiosity is the truest qualification.

I have no advanced degree in literature or criticism (does Mr. Schickel?), but I do have a master’s in economics from New York University where I learned very little except how to think. I don’t have an editor or mentor or guide to help me improve, but I spend hours writing and sometimes rewriting my posts (that admittedly few people actually read) and often enjoyably sift through my books fact checking or looking for neat quotes to help me look smarter than I am. And I write. I work very long days as a self-employed person, but late at night I write poetry, short stories and blog posts. I write I write I write. Nobody has to read it and nobody will ever read this blog because the authority of a major corporation is behind it. They are free to go.

Now, just as Mr. Schickel is thinking of his ideal critic when he writes, I think of the better part of blogging. I know that a lot of avid litbloggers take criticism such as his personally, but I honestly believe that these critics are looking at the broadest range of sites and the narrowest swath of time, or at elements of blogging that they don’t like, such as the linking or the informality and collegiality. In fact, when Bob Hoover, the books editor at the “Post Gazette,” wrote a shockingly similar diatribe against bloggers a year ago, I looked at some of his contemporary articles and found a review of Marley and Me (no matter how good it may be, it’s not serious literature), an article about the (literal) weight of books, and a list of recommended books including a collection of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. Not very impressive, but I gave a look at his work equal to what I felt he gave ours.

But what about those things people don’t seem to like? Since this is a “mini-altar of self-worship” I’ll quote myself from the letter I wrote (and then published on my blog) to Mr. Hoover:

“Blogs, sir, are more like a conversation than the articles you pride yourself on. This is why at first glance, they may seem to you to occupy the “modern version of Pithole, Pa., the rickety, raw oil boomtown of the 19th century.” The truth is, the short posts, the exclamative and reactive posts or personal anecdotes are part of what give blogs their personality. You pride yourself on being boring (your words), but I would submit to you that there is more than one way to engage readers.”

Blogs engage readers in a way that is entirely different than a collection of seven- to twelve-hundred word reviews can. Praise me, I’ll quote again from my letter to Mr. Hoover:

“If you bothered to read with anything approaching the seriousness that bloggers – and I am strictly speaking of “lit-bloggers” – give to their sites, you would find book reviews or thoughtful impressions of books read (whether or not there exists some market demand for the book to be considered); championing of ideas, independent presses and unknown authors. You would find groups of people gathering together to write on the same topic to further their understanding of the book at hand. You would find sites popping up on one topic so that bloggers can write in depth on them. You would find writers supporting other writers. You would find people discussing in a very loose (and admittedly sometimes difficult for the newcomer to grasp at first) way, the articles of respected literary journalists. In short, you would find something with a great deal of breadth and occasional depth that can’t be matched in the revenue driven ‘established media.’”

Dammit man, that’s good stuff. It’s not always serious, but it can be and there are a lot of serious people doing this, increasingly whom publish books and articles just like the big kids. It’s not all of uniform quality and the range of quality is far greater than in a newspaper, but just as I subscribe to the New York Review of Books and not Entertainment Weekly, readers will find good writers so those who ‘shouldn’t be critics’ don’t really matter (or more appropriately, shouldn’t matter to the Mr. Schickels of the world).

Like I said, blogs are nothing like newspapers, but they do seem to be thriving at a time when commercially supported cultural coverage is shrinking. I have a personal count of around 700 book oriented blogs in my feed reader (500 of which are members of MetaxuCafe), many of which are intimidatingly good. Still, I don’t read or like all of those blogs. There should be more proving of rather than asserting opinions. I don’t like everything that goes on in blogs. I’m not a personal fan of reviewing other reviewers, except when that’s discussing and furthering ideas from the original, but I imagine to review the review you have to read it and think about it; what more could a writer ask for? Many of the things people see and say about blogs are true, at least in general. But don’t let that keep anyone from getting past the patina of what deep down is a significant, vibrant, intelligent and thoughtful social life of the mind.

• posted by Bud Parr
• 24-May-2007
• 11 comments »
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