Why Blog?

It seems in recent months there has been a flowering of blogs among my friends and acquaintances. All of a sudden everyone is blogging. Since I am in the Old War Horse category of bloggers having blogged regularly for over 3 years now with over 600 blog entries to my --- well, I'm not sure if “credit” is the right word --- I'm kind of fascinated by this sudden boom in blogging.

During a discussion about blogs on a message board I am known to participate in, a comment was made that I appreciated. In the discussion some people were of the opinion that blogs would never replace message boards because they were just one person's opinion whereas message boards were more discussion oriented. People had varying perspectives on this but inevitably it came to the point that the problem with the open discussion character of discussion boards means that a lot of people, tucked securely behind the veil of anonymity, use the discussion boards to attack others, flame, insult, ridicule and otherwise act like idiots thus ruining the experience for those seeking serious discussion. One person said that he used to like message boards but was now considering a blog because he would not have to deal with the idiots. Someone responded calling him an elitist and he came back with the personally reasonable point that when you have a blog of your own, in your own name, there is a “pride of ownership” that compels you to maintain a standard not available on message boards. I liked that.

This is the way I see it --- a message board is the neighborhood tavern, a blog is a cocktail party in your home. In the neighborhood tavern you have no control over who is there and what they do there. It can be fun and a great time but you have to surrender any expectations of standards. At a home party you do have control over who participates and what level of experience can be maintained. Both have their place.

Of course blogs exist on many levels. I personally have three of them --- one for recipes, one (brand new and still struggling) for business purposes, and this one for essays, thoughts and ramblings. There is a great popularity for photo blogs these days which are great fun. Family blogs are another trend. But for my purposes here it is cultivating --- for myself but in a public forum --- the art of the personal essay. I borrow that phrase from Philip Lopate, who edited and wrote the introduction to The Art of The Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. It is an admirable book. Lopate was teaching at the University of Houston when I lived in that city and one of my friends was taking classes with him. She talked about him a lot --- I suspect she had a bit of a crush on him --- and she gave me a couple of his books as presents. I purchased the Personal Essay book some years later.

I happen to much admire personal essays and the people who write them. My bookshelves are crowded with volumes by John Updike, Andrei Codrescu, Noah Adams, Norman Mailer and other essayists whose work I admire. I'm particularly fond of essayists who write about writing. I've frequently lamented the regrettable memoir genre so popular these days but, of course, memoirs exist on all levels and Augusten Burroughs, no matter how many books he writes about his dreadful childhood, will never hold a candle to Marcel Proust. But I suspect that the hunger for an experience of another's inner machinations, as revealed in the well-crafted essay, is somewhat satisfied by the current crop of horrid memoirs in the way that a hunger for a good meal can be staved off by a Happy Meal.

A fellow blogger told me recently that he was amazed by the way I could blog in such a forthright manner about my feelings and emotions. This is something I have mixed feelings about. I am a firm believer that, if you want to write, you have to be willing to do that --- but do it without becoming solipsistic. This was one of Mark's favorite topics of discussion. He was a firm believer in putting one's self out there and of being emotionally honest on the page but he had little tolerance for self-analysis. We used to talk about that a lot. His theory was “just put it out there”, I'm not quite as brave.

Blogging is a fascinating phenomenon. I cruise blogs on a regular basis and am happy when I find one that is consistently interesting. Perhaps the day will come when everyone blogs. We can only hope that The Art of the Personal Essay will continue to flourish and provide grist for the mills of our fellow bloggers.

Thanks for reading.