Calling a weblog ?literary? does not require content that is about literature or even content that aims to be literature. It is not an attempt at categorizing one weblog and its author as more worthwhile in a canonical sense than any other. To the contrary, I propose that every weblog can be considered literary in the sense that it calls attention not only to what we read, but also to the unique way we read it….The novel… is defined as much in how readers are trained to enter its shared codes as it is by the specific delivery of those codes. Likewise, the weblog relies on particular codes enacted by both author and readers?readers who become, in this case, secondary authors. —Steve Himmer —The Labyrinth Unbound: Weblogs as Literature (Into the Blogosphere)
While Himmer acknowledges that bloggers choose all kinds of topics and methods, I think his choice to mostly exclude pundit and k-blogs from his analysis makes the following statement problematic: “A typical weblog offers both factual and interpretive information at once, making the distinction between truth and fiction irrelevant in favor of differentiation between trustworthy and untrustworthy.”
Yes, it’s useful to make the distinction… but there is a huge subset of bloggers who meticulously cite their sources. I recently responded to what I felt were some elisions that were excessive on an entry posted by The Pink Bunny of Battle, and the next time I checked his site, he had a major entry that was meticulously cited. I’m not saying that he changed just because of my entry, but he recognized that his credibility depended on his accuracy, which would increase his legitimacy in the eyes of many readers. (The Pink Bunny is now blue, by the way.) The effectiveness of his Battle Bunny persona wouldn’t be as strong if he didn’t pay careful attention to the facts that he uses in order to support his points. The polemic and the political speech are both long-standing literary genres. Yes, they depend more on ethos (character, trustworthiness) than logos (facts, accuracy), but bloggers can easily append a comment that links to a fact — in a way that a citizen cannot stand up and shout out a correction to a speech given in Congress.
Himmer’s assessment of weblogs in terms of Aarseth’s ergodic text is useful, because it reminds us that weblogs are serial and cumulative, meant to be experienced in short bursts over time — rather than, for example, in extended, frantic sessions just before one’s academic blogging portfolio is due. Himmer’s observation that a blog is a text that is never “finished” meshes with the experience one often has with hypertext literature, which never comes to a definitive end. Some people find the open-endedness of the text intriguing because it leads to critical inquiry. A reader who has a consumer attitude — read the text in order to get to the end and come to a conclusion and get it over with (or get credit for writing your homework) — brings to the act of reading a completely different set of expectations.
I’ll have to think some more about what those expectations are.
Thanks for these comments.
I agree about my framing of truth and fiction being problematic. In part, I think it’s because this is very much a personal reading of weblogs, reflecting my own habits and interests rather than a comprehensive view of the landscape. So the degree to which my reading is representative versus particular is certainly an issue, and one I might have (in hindsight) more effectively made the reader aware of.
In addition, from the time I first wrote this essay, to when the collection was published, to now, I think the world of weblogs has changed considerably, with attention shifting from the ‘personal’ nature of blogs to more specialized topics in politics, publishing, etc. Were I writing the essay today rather than two years ago, I would definitely try to address that (at least, I hope I would).
One of the things that makes blogs exciting to me–which is hopefully clear from the essay–is that they are always in progress rather than complete. This makes writing about them different, and in some ways more challenging, than writing about novels as I more often do. Just as the individual blog is still forming, so is the form itself, and it’s easy for today’s argument to be outstripped by tomorrow’s changes. I’m certainly not one to argue that the novel has become static, but at least with the weight of history and precedent behind a contemporary work the context doesn’t change quite so quickly. But it doesn?t allow a conversation like this one to take place so easily, either.
We’re all still very much doing what the blind men were doing when they first encountered the elephant. We’re all so used to the more or less instant exchange of information, that it’s probably too easy to beat yourself up for what you missed in between the time you finished it and it (finally) appears in the academic community.
First Monday had an excellent article upon how Google developed in the hours and days after the 9/11 attacks, and that has led to Google News, which, for me at any rate, completely changed the way I read news online. If I had the time, I’d do an article on Google Scholar, and submit it to First Monday, simply because in new media, things change so quickly.
At the same time, we need the careful, thoughtful, contemplative — and personal — essays that reflect deep thought about a certain time in cyberhistory.
But we certainly can’t wait for the medium to stop developing before we can write anything about it.