Blogging – Where Are We Now?
April 14 2010 — JA
Geordie Williamson’s piece in the Australian the other week on blogging and ‘literary style’ has predictably received a fair amount of online attention thus far. I don’t want to repeat too much of what’s already been said, but there were several things about the article, and the subsequent discussion on James Bradley’s blog city of tongues, that got me thinking, particularly about the way we perceive blogging and its goals.
This is in many ways a well-worn debate (and I’m aware that I may be preaching to the converted here), but my aim in this post is to try and move beyond the typical print versus blogs agenda, and the kind of reductive thinking that this can encourage, to see where we stand now.
One thing that struck me while reading the article, which granted made many astute observations, was how much we really gain, or in fact lose, by comparing blogs to print and vice-versa. Can we continue to judge blogs by the parameters of traditional media, or does this just set us up to fail?
Williamson, for example, made this comment with regard to Penni Russon’s poem, ‘Fragments from a fragmentary mind’:
I returned to the piece's original digital context (her blog, eglantine's cake) and read it again on the screen. Rather than the clear expanse of the anthology's pages, the poem shared screen space with a colourful blog header, archive listings, contact details: all the necessary impedimenta of the blogosphere.
Of course, the overall effect is distracting. Poems demand total attention: blogs are sites where other texts and all manner of media, from sound to image, are only a hyperlink click away. Think of the mental space to be cleared to properly engage with a long poem, or of those endless 19th-century novels that take chapters to gather up their narrative concerns: any literature that demands an extended period of readerly monogamy will soon be betrayed by the internet's polyamorous nature.
While I tend to disagree first of all that long form text is unworkable as a blog post simply because the internet provides too many distractions, it’s also interesting to contrast this with Russon’s reaction via her comment on this response by Cerebral Mum: ‘I honestly can only think of it as a blog post, not a poem. It’s raw, immediate, confessional, reflective… I guess all these things can make it a poem, but it’s my blogging voice (highly influenced in the moment by the film Synecdoche, New York…)’. Surely the more pressing question then is not whether poetry works better on print or as a digital text, but how it can work best according to the medium chosen? To play devil’s advocate, I’d just as soon argue that poems like this one, published by the Rumpus, lends itself better to screen rather than the printed page.
One could easily argue that the comparison to print is invited here, as Williamson was also writing on a new anthology of Australia blog writing, Miscellaneous Voices, to be launched at 6pm tonight at Readings. I should point out at this stage that I have two blog posts in there, so obviously I’m not unbiased. But taking one step back, I don’t think that the purpose of the anthology or other like it is to see whether blogging stacks up against the printed word, because clearly, without the bells and whistles of a web page, embedded links, comments and other transient images, it will always appear clunky and somewhat haphazard. The point, as editor Karen Andrews writes on the SPUNC blog, is to reach a different, although not necessarily wider, audience; to say in a way ‘[s]tart here, and keep going’.
Another relevant question might then be how we can provide valuable criticism to blogging as a whole. So far, the tendency has either been to compare blog writing against the mastheads of print, or to side-step the issue by characterising online media as ‘casual’ and ‘of-the-moment’ (even Papercuts recently took on this approach when asking whether blogs can be ‘literary’). This type of reasoning doesn’t quite stand up, not only because blogs are not always light ‘fluff’ pieces, but also because it shrugs off any responsibility to give in-depth thought to the issues covered. From what I can see, the best reviews of blogs themselves come from other blogs and the comments therein. If something is sloppy or uninteresting you’ll probably be told, on no uncertain terms at that.
Finally, I can’t help thinking that traditional media is stepping a lot closer to blogging than is immediately apparent. One criticism of long, in depth posts has often been the ‘digital noise’ factor – the distraction that banners, ads and links et cetera et cetera present to the reader. Yet many newspapers, the Australian included, regularly put their articles up online after publication. Why is it that pop-up boxes and those annoying sidebar videos aren’t thought of as interruptions to those pieces, which can sometimes be three or for pages long? Is it again a case of being blinded by difference?
Update: Also of interest is this article in the Canberra Times, featuring James Bradley, Sophie Cunningham, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Alec Patric and Charlotte Wood on writers and blogging (via Nigel Featherstone's Under the counter or a flutter in the dovecot)
Comments
Jessica, I take your points. I certainly agree with you and Penni that there are some texts, including poems, that seem written for the web. Pound's Cantos come immediately to mind - they work better on the screen than the page because digression (and compression of reference) are the poems' ordering principle. Mallarme's A Coup de des, however, does not, since it is one of those poems where the white space of the page is as important as the words that appear on it.
As for The Australian putting reviews online, it is fascinating (in an awful way) to read them again in that new context. They seem stilted and formal on the screen, lacking in the immediacy and rawness that Russon writely claims for blog posts. It is no criticism of her poem or my review to say that each has a medium that best suits it.
I should add that my aim in writing about Miscellaneous Voices was not to bash the anthology for its perceived flaws: it was to give a landmark local production some oxygen, while addressing some universal concerns raised by its publication. I hope any heat generated by the to and fro translates into copies sold.
'writely claims for blog posts'?!
No pun was intended, promise. I really must not post before my first cup of coffee.
Well I do love a good pun before 9am, even if unintended!
I certainly saw that your article intended to give life to MV and of course that's a good thing - like you say, any debate on the topic is worthwhile and helps spread the word. On that note I should add that blogging does need more space to be critically reviewed and discussed - whether in print or online.
I suppose my point in general was where this discussion should spring from. In the same way that books change shape once adapted to film, so too does text alter when placed in the digital. The white space you speak of is important - by couldn't this also be achieved on screen? I could imagine a website say, stripped back, with beautiful typesetting/design, that does justice to longer, denser texts...
I think the materiality of the text is incredibly important in understanding it. While MV is a great way to profile the writing of bloggers, it seems that some meaning can't help but be lost in the posts that use the medium.
The New Media academic N Katherine Hayles suggests that literature should be critiqued in its form (solid or virtual): 'here remains a widespread presupposition in literary studies that a literary "work" is an immaterial verbal construction, as if words floated in the air without having a tangible body'.
And this also appears to apply from print-to-print. There are poets whose original manuscripts do not match their anthologised versions (as the monospace of the typewriter giving way to book print layouts).
I also wonder when we say blogging, do we mean all text online, as blogging per se can't necessarily incorporate online artists, some of whose work cannot sensibly translate to text.
On the question of how we can provide valuable criticism to blogging, I think the problem is very very much one of "voice". Geordie's article discussed it quite beautifully at the end when discussing James' contributions ~ that somewhat delicate balance between the personal and the idea - and James' post discussed it too.
But even if the personal is tightly controlled, the "I" remains and with blogging we are not able to read it as simply a narrative mode. That blur between writer and text has always difficult, even when a reviewer has a discrete object - a book - in front of him. It is more so, I think, in the case of blogging, and it becomes harder to maintain that studied distance we have always considered a part of rigorous critique without our responses seeming somehow churlish.
If the best reviews of blogs come from other blogs, I think it is solely because of the compatible voice.
Everything has its place and the desire to strip our responses to texts of personal bias or emotion is a valuable one. But I can't say that I am sorry to see traditional media making a little more room for their own writers' "I"s and that it is no longer just the "I" of authority we are reading. (I agree that "traditional media is stepping a lot closer to blogging than is immediately apparent.")
As much as we find more "flattery and insults" online - and we do - I think it also forces us to remember that literature has never really been made up of discrete objects and has always been simply fragments of the human conversation. Learning how to critique it from a less-than-safe distance, with the human face always so present... I think that is a worthwhile endeavour.
There are a couple of comments on a long post of Sophie's archived by Pandora at Sarsaparilla that may interest readers of this thread. Firstly, Boynton (quoted by Sophie later in the article she mentions, and one of my favourite comments ever about what blogging might possibly be); http://tinyurl.com/y6bjr96
and secondly, Jill Jones: http://tinyurl.com/y5vk8we
You should be able to scrollback up either of those pages to read the whole discussion inside the archive. Sadly, the original site only lives there.
Sorry this comment is long - but I am currently experimenting with cleaner pages online too, and look forward to reading that link Benjamin has provided.
Jessica, I have posted a comment to this but it had a few links in it - perhaps it's in the spam holder? If it doesn't turn up, I might repost them one by one.
Thanks, Genevieve
A few responses on this and that:
I'm not sure that 'The Arctic Sequence' posted on The Rumpus does actually work in its on-line space - this is an example of all those wretched banners and ads flashing at us that Geordie speaks of. There's just too much competing for our attention. (In my view, this sequence would best be presented in a physical gallery, where three-dimensional whiteness might do the work justice, and I should say that I do like the actual work very much.)
I agree with Geordie that works originally written for physical print can appear stilted on-line. I put a lot of effort into the monthly column I write for the Canberra Times, and on the whole I reckon they work in their newspapery cultural-comment context. But when I post them on-line: well, some really do seem to take on a stilted quality, like an academic walking into a nightclub.
What I've observed in the various recent debates about blogging is a strong defensiveness from bloggers whenever someone trots into their space and asks questions. It's like many bloggers want to be considered professional writers, but as soon as someone starts reviewing their activities they run a mile. I'm generalising unfairly here, of course, because what I found through writing a feature on Australian writers who are also bloggers is that there are bloggers who really are asking the hard questions and thinking about the future.
For some odd reason I keep coming back to comparing the blog world to the drug world: both can be wonderful, both can be dreadful traps; to avoid the traps we should make sure we stay sharp in our thinking and ask questions at every opportunity. And look after our friends.
Interesting responses all round.
As a blogger, I'm definitely interested in criticism but I agree there tends to be a defensiveness (from all sides I might add) when we try and do this. I think the main reason for this is because we're still trying to develop an understanding of how best to review blogging on its own terms. I can understand the need to compare print versus blogs to an extent, but this vein can also be limiting. If we are to provide considered feedback on blog writing, it should be on how the content/text works as a blog (which can be anything from great to awful), not whether print or digital is the better medium. On this I take Ben's point about being mindful about blogging versus other digital forms.
genevieve - thanks for those links. I've released the comment above.
thank you kindly!
'many bloggers want to be considered professional writers' - AHEM. Says who? Nobody pays me to blog, Nigel, nor do I want them to. I'm also not terribly interested in whether my work is reviewable or not, but that's another story.
Your discussion is based on a fallacy, I think. Where the defensiveness has largely arisen is when a blogger is anywhere near halfway good enough to develop an audience, at which point professional writers seem to get very tetchy indeed, and words like 'scab' are far too close to the surface for anyone's comfort.
I might modify that statement of Nigel's a little to say 'many bloggers want to be considered professional bloggers'. That would be a statement that I identify with more.
I admit sometimes I get spun a little by these debates because I do make a little money from my blog; but then I also advocate and promote (obviously) the literary and artistic merits of blogging too. I understand why bloggers get defensive because, honestly, there's been cause in the past, but as a blogger I also need/must get to a point when I get on with the job.
I must admit to being confused as to where the points of contention are in this debate.
I do agree with Jess's point that it is somewhat inevitable that part of the criticism of blogs will end up being a comparison to print.
Even the things that make a blog a blog, are in some ways defined by how they're different from print.
But the question of how you judge a blog on its own merits still remains. If it's been answered, I must've missed it.
perhaps 'some bloggers', Karen, rather than many? unless you have some stats of course.
ooh that didn't quite come out the way I wanted it to. Sorry.
Hey, G, no problem I knew what you meant. And yes, perhaps it is more 'some' than 'many'. I have no stats, which makes me wonder now if there are any available and how I might hunt them down...
Genevieve, do notice that I actually wrote 'It's like many many bloggers want to be considered professional writers', meaning it appears as if. What I'm suggesting is that from my experience - and I do like to hang around well-written and thoughtful blogs - it seems many bloggers want to be considered more than just bloggers, but serious writers (and yes, that's an interesting sentence to unpack!). Bloggers wanting to be considered serious writers is not a bad thing, I should add. But when someone comes in and asks some heavy questions, it could be said that some - many? - suddenly retreat to the relative safety of 'I'm only in this for the fun and recreation of it, so please don't hurt me'. By the way, I'm yet to hear of a blogger calling another blogger a scab because they're getting more success - maybe I should get out more.
PS Surely the word 'professional' in the arts context is more about attitude than bank-balance.
Well, 1. No, 2. Maybe and 3. You misheard me, Nigel.
Never mind seems and if. You are making a generalisation. You should be prepared for it to be challenged, especially if you haven't taken the trouble to ask individuals how they came to online writing. You will find many of them are at an interesting point between journalling and writing, one at which most people would never claim they are aiming at something they might consider they could be paid for. If they are not professionals, they're well within their rights to tell you so, aren't they?
If you've always been a professional writer, clearly you have no idea what it's like to develop an audience for an online journal. So maybe it is hard for you to have empathy with people who are not really fully aware of how good their work could be, if they had the chance to stretch a bit (or how bad it might be either). I can't see you trying to walk in anyone else's shoes here. I should add that I'm not disappointed or surprised by that.
I said that 'Where the defensiveness has largely arisen is when a blogger is anywhere near halfway good enough to develop an audience, at which point professional writers seem to get very tetchy indeed, and words like 'scab' are far too close to the surface for anyone's comfort. '
I did not say that bloggers are calling each other scabs. In the field of reviewing, there has been a lot of talk about the question of reviews written by bloggers for free and posted online and substantial concern voiced by paid reviewers and others that bloggers' activity will reduce the number of reviews appearing in newspapers. PS - you're stretching that point way too thin, baby.
that is, addressing your PS about professionalism.
Genevieve, I doubt I've get anything more to add, especially after spending a couple of weeks interviewing 5 professional writers/bloggers and knocking up a 2500-word article about it, which was recently published in the Canberra Times, with the link kindly noted above. That article and what I've said above is probably the sum total of my thoughts on this..at this juncture anyway. However, I think we've reached an interesting topic, which is 'Empathy ang blogging: how to walk in someone else's shoes when you have a modem for footwear' (because you do make some judgements and assumptions there, but I'll let them waft off into the blogosphere). Perhaps a related topic for further discussion could be 'What is a professional blogger?'
PS I have no issues at all with bloggers writing reviews for free on-line, if that's what they want to do. As long as the result is well written and researched, more power to them. Even if it's simply a whoosh of 'I just love this book' words, then that could well be as interesting and insightful as something that might appear in the paper. Potentially even more so.
Of course, that 'ang' was mean to be 'and'. Whoops.
Nigel, regarding your related question, you might like to have a look here, if you haven't heard about this guy already (and at the FAQ if you have the time). http://www.problogger.net/about-problogger/
I don't have a lot more time to spend on this either, but I have read your article and it's very good. You might be interested in the whole post at Sarsaparilla that I quoted from earlier (put one of those links in the address bar and scroll up) - the post is called 'Writers, blogging' and is a working discussion led by Sophie Cunningham preparatory to her writing an article not dissimilar to your own, in 2007 for the Age (the link to the article is probably at her website, I won't put it here as the spam eater will take me away.)
Can I say in parting that I am delighted by your liberal attitude to blog reviews!! hooray.
Coming from the theatre blogging fraternity - and also as one who works in print media - I do find the points of contention a little confusing. I have never seen blogging and print in such oppositional terms - surely they are actually complementary activities? A lot of theatre bloggers here are also print reviewers - some very experienced. Maybe it's to do with a general feeling that theatre has got the rough end of the pineapple in terms of critical attention, but it's generated a welcome space of discussion in the theatrical culture.
In any case, from my pov it's difficult to see how or why these different media need to be mutually exclusive. In practice they are not. Newspapers have limited space, and so provide a wider audience with a more, er, cogent review. Blogs permit more in-depth investigation. Twitter introduces another element of immediate, realtime and casual communication. Co-ordinating all of those is something a lot of journalists are doing, and it has a name - "through editing" - google this year's Hugh Cudlipp lecture from the Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, for some interesting discussion around that.
I might as well add immodestly that last year I won the Critic of the Year, the only prize in Australia for arts criticism, and as the judges made clear, it was my blogging work as well as my print work that won it for me. I was the first blogger to do so. Which suggests something is changing, and that maybe the question of legitimacy has already been answered.
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