The Reading Experience

Litblogs and Critblogs

The increase in numbers of what are still generally called "literary weblogs" has been really quite astonishing. When I started this blog 4 1/2 years ago, there were a few dozen such blogs, perhaps 15-20 of them blogs I tried to read regularly. (I still think of these as the "original" literary blogs, and many if not most of them are still around.) By now, there are so many literary weblogs, approaching all genres of writing, literary news and the publishing business, and the role of literary criticism and book reviewing from so many different angles and to so many different purposes that the very term "literary weblog" does seem hopelessly imprecise. And even if one wanted to keep up with all the blogs that concern themselves in one way or another with literature or criticism, that would now be almost impossible.

Some of the new blogs that have appeared in the last couple of years, in particular blogs such as Paper Cuts, The Book Bench, and The Book Room, all sponsored by various print publications, have not, in my opinion, contributed much to the development of the litblog as a medium, however. These blogs have only reinforced the most reductive and stereotyped views of the litblog as a source of superficial chitchat and literary gossip. Few of the posts on these blogs explore any issue in depth or examine any particular book with even cursory specificity. There is no attempt to provoke cross-blog critical discussion, either vis-a-vis specific posts or generically--of the blogs I have named, only The Book Bench even includes a blogroll, and it is very short and limited to the usual suspects. Whatever links that are provided are to the same old mainstream media stories to which so many other blogs are also linking and which, of course, ultimately only reinforces the supposed first-order authority of the kinds of print publication hosting the blogs in question. I don't know if I would go so far as to speculate that these newspaper and magazine-centered blogs are deliberately working to undermine the potential authority of literary blogs by creating examples demonstrating their vapidity, but the concept of the "litblog" they embody surely does trivialize what literary blogs have accomplished and might still accomplish.

Admittedly this concept was not created out of whole cloth by those operating these print-adjunct blogs. From the beginning, one model of the literary weblog has been the daily digest, brief entries on media-reported literary news along with links to specific news items or reviews or opinion pieces. Often enough, however, the blogger's underlying attitude toward the item at hand, the blogger's own literary sensibility, was really the point of such posts, and so even bloggers who stuck to the digest form usually managed to convey a point of view about the subject at hand--indeed, litblogs would never have captured the attention they did attract, prompting the appearance of these old-media blogs in response, if they hadn't offered a perspective on current books and other literay matters not to be found in existing media. Nevertheless, the literary blogosphere as a whole relatively quickly progressed beyond the daily digest, and while posting became less frequent it also became longer and more fully developed. If literary blogs have not exactly become substitutes for book reviews and critical journals, they have become sources of genuinely engaged literary discussion, ranging from conventional book reviews to both short and long-form critical analyses to full-blown scholarly essays. Combined with the ability through commenting and linking to extend critical discussion immediately and directly, the scope and the quality of literary blogs have allowed them, at least for me, collectively to supersede in interest and utility most of the remaining newspaper book review sections and those few magazines that still occasionally offer literary content. (I stopped reading scholarly essays published in academic journals a long time ago.)

As a way of noting the evolution of the literary weblog to its current form as a medium for serious literary inquiry (and as a way of calling attention to the retrograde assumptions of the old-media blogs), I have re-categorized my blogrolls to reflect the present state of the literary blog more accurately. I have made a basic distinction between what I would still call a "litblog" and the kind of more critically expansive blog I now think of as a "critblog." (Not all of the blogs listed under "critblogs" are focused only on literature.) The line I have drawn between the two is no doubt a little blurry in some instances, but the litblogs are the blogs that still fulfill some of the functions assumed by the first wave of literary weblogs but do so in a particularly enlivened and useful manner (I think them useful, at any rate), while the critblogs feature, either regularly or with some reliable frequency, posts explicitly intended as criticism. The latter may or may not be conventionally discursive literary criticism, but sheer length and adherence to the customs of critical writing are not the qualities I necessarily look for in a critblog. Quality of insight and/or specificity of analysis are what I hope to find. I will continue to identify blogs that exemplify these virtues and will add them to the blogroll as warranted.

And as a way of perhaps further contributing to the evolution of the litblog to the critblog and beyond, I am planning within a few months to inaugurate a new project that will, I hope, extend the reach of the kind of critical writing originating on blogs, the kind of writing to which I have mostly restricted myself on this blog, to encompass more formally-developed critical essays, specifically essays on contemporary American fiction. I intend to write some of the essays myself, but I would like to open up this new site (which will still be attached to The Reading Experience) to other contributors as well. However, unlike, say, Scott Esposito's The Quarterly Conversation--which has otherwise led the way in demonstrating what a web-based literary review can accomplish--I would like this site to focus not on new books but on books from the recent past (post-1980) that deserve additional close reading beyond the attention they received in their initial reviews, by writers who deserve careful consideration (perhaps more careful consideration than they've previously received) as writers whose work may last. At this point, the plan is for these essays to appear on an ongoing or rolling schedule rather than in separate "issues" so that the whole archive of posted essays would always be readily available. I am currently writing an essay on Russell Banks's Affliction, which will presumably be the first of such essays to appear, but I will have more information about this projected site in the very near future.

Finally, I have reconfigured my "literary criticism" blogroll to include in one place all of the non-blog websites I can find that offer reviews and criticism (not including newspaper book pages). The list contains both web-only publications and print publications that offer at least a significant portion of their content online. If there are other sites that might be added to the list, I would appreciate being notified of such.

Stock-Taking

The Litblog Co-op is closing down, mainly because so many of its members have become so preoccupied with their own blogs, as well as other literary endeavors that in some cases their blogs helped to make possible, that they could not devote the kind of time and attention required to keep a loosely-affiliated group like the LBC functioning adequately. The LBC was formed with a specific mission to highlight books that weren't being discussed much, or at all, in mainstream book sections by putting the collective authority of the then better-known literary weblogs behind the selection of one book per quarter the group believed was worth readers' attention.

I'd like to take the LBC's dissolution as an opportunity to not only reflect on its success in highlighting such books but also on the evolution of the literary blog from the time (actually only 3-4 years ago) when "literary weblog" seemed merely a peculiar conjunction of words to the present moment, when the litblog has become sufficiently established that numerous print-based critics have attacked literary blogs for encroaching on their territory (the gates to which they apparently intend to keep).

When I discovered what I would identify as the original group of self-identified literary weblogs--Maud Newton, The Literary Saloon, Moorish Girl, Golden Rule Jones, The Elegant Variation, The Return of the Reluctant, a few others--I had for a while wondered why there was not more web-based literary discussion and criticism, since such discussion on the internet could be both more widely disseminated and more up-to-date than what was published in magazines--most of which had actually been moving away from providing their content online--or even in newspapers, only a very few of which printed literary-related commentary on a semi-regular basis, anyway. What I found on these ur-litblogs was, if not fully worked-out literary criticism, an obvious enthusiasm about books and an admirable interest in serious fiction. As a lapsed academic, I was especially pleased to find such an interest among people who, in most cases, were not academics, since living in the world of the academy can lead one to suspect there are no serious readers of serious fiction outside its insulated walls.

My alienation from academe was in part a reaction against the prevailing modes of academic criticism, which in my view had essentially abandoned "literature itself" in favor of critical approaches that were mostly just a way of doing history or sociology by other means. I had pursued a Ph.D in literary study in order to study literature, not to validate my political allegiances on the cheap, or to study something called "culture," an artifact of which literature might be considered but given no more emphasis than any other cultural "expression." I was looking to find a way to write literary criticism that continued to focus on the literary qualities of literature, and to that end had published several critical essays in publications that would still print such efforts when I happened upon the literary weblogs I have mentioned. I soon enough concluded there was no reason the literary blog could not accomodate a form of literary criticism--longer than the typical kind of post I was seeing on the extant litblogs but shorter than the conventional scholarly article or long critical essay. Trying out these possibilities has been the ongoing project of this blog over the now four years of its existence.

At a time when still print-bound critics and book reviewers seem to be handing off a rhetorical baton in their eagerness to keep ahead of the perceived threat posed by literary blogs, it is rather difficult to recall how thoroughly marginal to the established critical discourse the literary weblog was in the first months and years of its existence. Among the criticisms that were directed at literary blogs in this initial stage of audience-building was the accusation they were too insular, too preoccupied with linking to each other in a kind of in-group celebration. And indeed there was a good deal of cliquish cross-linking, but this was mostly, it seemed to me, a function of the litblog's presumed marginality, a way of creating a community of engaged readers--the early bloggers were readers first of all--who could communicate their interests, insights, and enthusiasms to like-minded others. While most of us exploring the boundaries of the new medium were surely hoping our posting might attract a wider audience, I don't think many anticipated such a dramatic increase in attention paid to litblogs as did indeed occur. (The suddenness of this increase can be illustrated by the fact that as recently as BEA 2005, efforts by the then just-created Litblog Co-op--specifically by LBC mastermind Mark Sarvas--to interest the powers that be at the BEA in a panel discussion of literary blogs were rebuffed because few people associated with the event had heard of literary blogs.)

The Litblog Co-op was created during the first wave of interest in literary weblogs from beyond the small corner of the blogosphere litbloggers and their initial audience had staked out for themselves--a few noticies in newspapers, links from more established, non-literary blogs, comments from "name" authors and critics increasingly showing up on various litblogs. As I recall it, the LBC aimed to accomplish two related goals: to bring attention to small-press books and less-known writers, and, implicitly, to raise the profile of literary weblogs even higher, to make them, through the authority the LBC might acquire from its selections, more of an accepted presence in the national conversation about books and writers. These were both entirely laudable goals, one directed toward showcasing alternatives to the fiction most loudly celebrated by the "book business," one directed toward providing alternative sources of discussion and debate about current fiction.

I'd have to say that our success in accomplishing the first goal was mixed. Several books that received little or no attention in the mainstream review pages did get some exposure as LBC nominees. Some of these were books by first-time authors, while others were by more veteran authors (some in translation) whose previous work had not gotten them the recognition they might have deserved. However, I don't think the LBC was ultimately able to establish itself as an authoritative guide to small-press books and overlooked fiction, judging by the degree of notice taken of our selections by blogs not themselves part of the LBC or by the literary community more generally, as well as by the number of comments most of the postings on the LBC blog received. The LBC's Read This! selections just never seemed to achieve the status with readers of current fiction that they were originally meant to achieve.

I believe that one explanation for this failure is that the LBC never really recovered from the disappointment spawned by its very first selection, a more or less mainstream work of "literary fiction" that had already been widely reviewed and whose selection seemed to many (including me) to be inconsistent with the LBC's stated mission. This selection perhaps indicated that the LBC was going to be business as usual, choosing the same old books published by the same old publishers and reviewed in the same old high-profile book reviews. Our subsequent selections mostly demonstrated that this was not the case, but it may be that an impression was left that the LBC wasn't quite the champion of unduly neglected fiction it was claiming to be.

It may also be that, eventually at least, the Litblog Co-op was perceived as a too narrowly-constituted, "clubbish" sort of group. When the LBC was formed, it could plausibly claim to represent the "leading" literary weblogs, but the litblogosphere has so dramatically expanded, both in sheer numbers of blogs and in the quality of the posting to be found there, that it really could no longer assert itself as the collective voice of the preeminent litbloggers. The LBC did enlarge its membership, and continued to invite new members when places became available, but this only made the process of nominating titles, choosing a favorite, and posting on the ultimate selection increasingly unwieldy, and it would have only gotten worse if we'd expanded the membership once again. When the litblogosphere was a fairly self-contained space, populated by bloggers united by a desire to identify worthy books and confer a kind of "indie" credential to these books, it was still possible for the member bloggers of the LBC to consider themselves the vanguard of a new online literary movement, but by now such a claim just isn't credible.

As for the second goal of bringing more attention to literary weblogs, there is no doubt that litblogs have established themselves as part of literary culture, but I don't really think this was a direct result of the actions of the Litblog Co-op. Perhaps the existence of the LBC did contribute to the increase of weblogs dedictated to literature, both past and present, but it was only a modest factor among those that led more readers to litblogs and ultimately led some of them to become litbloggers. I think it's probable that the individual members of the LBC did more to make the litblogosphere an accepted source of information about and judgment of current fiction on their own blogs than did the LBC itself. It's likely that a given title can be exposed to a potential audience just as effectively when two or three or more individual bloggers discover it and consider its merits as when it is in effect made the winner of a competition conducted by some such organization as the Litblog Co-op.

In this way the LBC may have unwittingly performed at least one useful service. Its relatively brief existence, and the reasons for its brevity, suggests that probably there will be no online version of the National Book Critics Circle, no self-appointed arbiters of literary value on the net to rival the NBCC and other print-based critics' associations that exist mainly to bestow awards. This does not mean the litblogosphere, for example, cannot wield the authority represented by these kinds of groups, but it does mean that whatever authority literary blogs do attain will be much more widely dispersed, not concentrated in organized groups pretending to encompass the "best" available judgment about current fiction or poetry. Since there is no such "best" judgment, just as the books chosen as "best" by the NBCC, The National Book Awards, or, indeed, the Litblog Co-op are no such thing (except by accident), readers will need to find the litblogs that consistently examine the sorts of books they find they like to read. This may result in a further fracturing of the litblogosphere into zones of "niche" interest, but this will only reflect an already existing diversity of taste and preference and will hardly lead to the destruction of a "common" literary culture, the existence of which is and always was a myth.

I expect the litblogosphere to continue to grow. I especially expect an increase in blogs offering longer-form commentary and criticism, as opposed to the link-centered blog that defined the literary weblog in its first years of existence but that by now has become just one kind of litblog among others. The more that literary blogs become credible contributors to critical/literary discourse, the less will be the need of an organization like the Litblog Co-op, or for any other effort to unite bloggers on behalf of the literary blog as a medium for serious literary discussion. Considering that all signs point to a decline in literary coverage in newspapers and magazines, I still believe the time may come when blogs and other forms of online publishing will dominate the literary discussion. If so, the LBC will have played some short-term role in underscoring the potential of literary weblogs, although their long-term potential is still to be tested.

Blogging Sensibilities

In his response to the spat between litbloggers and n + 1 over "The Blog Reflex," Scott Esposito observed that, however simplistic the n +1 analysis really was, literary blogs nevertheless "could use a little honest, intelligent criticism."

I agree. I even agree that some of what "The Blog Reflex" had to say is worth considering, even if it is also true that it isn't clear really "how much n + 1 reads blogs," as Scott further points out. There are indeed more weblogs in the litblogosphere that take advantage of the medium "to post the best they could think or say" than are dreamt of in Keith Gessen and Marco Roth's philosophies, whether or not these blogs feature "5,000 word critiques" (although there are some of those, as well.) I would hope that most readers of this blog would agree that it mostly attempts to do that, although I do also provide links and shout-outs, which seem to me perfectly appropriate, and even worthwhile, activites, especially if you believe, as I do, that literary blogs can be useful in fostering an ongoing discussion about literary matters, a discussion that could be enhanced simply by pointing readers to other participants or to information relevant to it. Thus while some acts of linking and pasting do undoubtedly contribute to the culture of high-speed trivia, others could just as readily advance serious discourse about literature as citations and bibliographies in more recognizably "scholarly" forms of writing.

I also agree that sometimes those bloggers who by and large don't offer longer posts and reviews but instead comment on literary news and issues in a more epigrammatic style actually condense their views too severely--if not to the "I shit on Dante" extreme of unsupported opinionizing then at least too casually to merit much consideration by serious people. However, Gessen and Roth are wrong to imply that all blogs using this compact method of posting are equally frivolous or worthy of scorn. Mark Sarvas's The Elegant Variation seems to particulary rile up Gessen and Roth, but if they bothered to read that blog over the long haul, rather than focusing on individual posts that don't satisfy their expectations, they would certainly find that TEV expresses "an acute and well-stocked sensibility," one as "acute" as anything to be found in n +1 or any other literary journal. On many blogs, "sensibility" emerges cumulatively, over a longer stretch of shorter posts. Regular readers of The Elegant Variation surely know quite well what kind of writing and writers Mark Sarvas admires and why he admires them. If Gessen and Roth don't want to put in the time required to become acquainted with this or that blogger's sensibility, so be it. But their blanket assertions that "litblogs" don't engage in seriously-intended commentary about books and literature is just factually incorrect.

Still, it does seem to me that too many litblogs do settle for the link/quote/quip style without adding anything substantial or distinctive to the conversation about current literary developments. There's a great deal of overlap, too many bloggers linking to the same items who don't have the same powers of aphoristic insight as Mark Sarvas or Ed Champion or who just contribute to the creation of a real enough kind of herd mentality emanating from a large enough part of the litblogosphere. To some extent, this may be what the "Blog Reflex" is trying to get at, however much its authors made this point difficult to debate because of the deliberately hostile way in which it was expressed. If so, I can accept the implicit critique even if it was manifestly overgeneralized and needlessly contemptuous (as were Gessen and Roth's further comments at The Millions, TEV, and The Valve.)

On the other hand, this criticism really only applies if the litblogs in question truly do aspire to participate in the larger, more nationally focused discourse about books, to be part of some broader effort to rival, even replace, traditional print publications. And obviously many of them don't. They're content to provide links to a smaller circle of congenial readers and to engage in what is sometimes sneeringly referred to as "book chat." I'm not much interested in such chat myself, but it's only when this kind of book discussion, whether online or in print (where it most certainly does occur) passes itself off as rigorous criticism (or itself sneers at actual literary criticism) that I look at it askance. And I don't know why Keith Gessen and Marco Roth would puff themselves up with indignation over these blogs, either. They're not propping up the capitalist order, and they encourage people to read.

I do worry about the ways in which litblogs, especially the more well-known and influential ones, have in effect established a too cozy relationship with the "book business." Thus the question asked by G & R--"Why should publishers pay publicists and advertise in book supplements when a community of native agents exists who will perform the same service for nothing and with an aura of indie-cred?"--is well worth the posing. Certainly publishers have not stopped employing publicists and advertising in book reviews, but I am uncomfortable with the speed with which literary weblogs transformed themselves from quasi-outsider sources of literary debate into friendly partners with book publishers and other affiliates of the book business. I myself do indeed accept review copies from a number of publishers--and sometimes solicit them--but I never state or imply that I intend to review a book no matter my ultimate response to it, and especially don't promise a favorable review. (This seems to me the likely policy Gessen and Roth follow in their own consideration of publisher-provided copies.) The vast majority of books I have received in this way I have not mentioned on this blog at all. I'll review/discuss a book if it raises issues I otherwise want to discuss or if I am overwhelmingly impressed with it. If this means I will receive fewer "free advance copies" in the future, so be it. I still make enough money (barely) to buy books if I need to.

The best kind of relationship between bloggers and publishers is that described by Mark Thwaite at The Book Depository:

The blogosphere is a conversation. And the first thing publishers need to do is to join that conversation, not seek to dominate it. How do they do that? Well, they get a blog and they start blogging! But I’d recommend that they don’t simply use the blog as a publicity blog. . .

To get the most out of their blog, publishers need it to be a genuine part of the wider conversation about books that is the blogosphere, but one that just happens to be hailing from a place that also happens to publish books. . .

In other words, the publishers should come to the blogosphere, not the other way around.

But I also think that Gessen and Roth are mistaken to assert that what litbloggers really want from their interactions with publishers and their consideration of particular books is "recognition" measured in "hits." I can remember the earlier days of the litblogosphere--before "mainstream" recognition came our way and we were courted by book publishers in the first place--when it was true that links from other bloggers--at that time our numbers were considerably fewer--were highly prized, a sign that your blog was accepted into the "self-sustaining community," as G & R put it. But that time has long passed. The kind of incestuous cross-blogging for which litbloggers were originally (and sometimes justifiably) criticized essentially disappeared once litblogs began to draw wider attention. Most of the ur-litblogs--TEV, Maud Newton, Moorish Girl, Silliman's Blog--report their news and views from sources that are as unimpeachably newsworthy as anything n + 1 itself surveys. These blogs no longer need the click-throughs that pump up one's hit count, anyway, but I nonetheless believe that even those of us in the lower-rent disticts, who do benefit from the links we still occasionally get from the plusher quarters, are not fishing for links and do not blog primarily for recognition and to secure our "niches."

If the n +1 critique of blogs is that they trivialize the discussion of literature, I can't agree. The rise of litblogs has been, on the whole, a positive development for serious book discussion. If, however, the charge is that sometimes litblogs focus on trivialities, I think the allegation has some merit. The year-end obsession with "best-of" lists (shared, of course, with mainstream print publications) almost makes me want to stop reading litblogs during the month of December, and the constant monitoring of prizes and awards doesn't do much for me, either. I could not have had less interest in the most recent "tournament of books." But ultimately such annoyances are more than balanced by the enhanced attention to fiction and poetry litblogs have cumulatively brought to bear and by the possibilities for new forms of criticism they continue to promise. Perhaps if the editors of n + 1 themselves paid more attention to the whole range of literary weblogs that are now available (and not just to the mentioning of their own names in the most prominent of blogs), they would come to see that as well.

Erosion

According to an article in indieWire:

. . .technology's greatest gift to film culture may be the blogosphere, which has seemingly ignited a passionate audience for auteur cinema around the country. Film historian David Bordwell, whose film textbooks are used in college classrooms around the world, has recently taken to blogging, which he calls an "overturning of the critical establishment," he says. "In the 1950s and 1960s, when film culture really got going, it was a small space, mostly in New York City. Now that monopoly is eroding very fast and there is a tremendous amount of people out there. They don't buy newspapers. They're not my students, and they're not the general public, either," he continues. "And their cinephilia is much greater."

I don't know that American literary culture was ever literally a "small space," but it is surely the case that it has long been centered in New York City, whose writers, critics, and publishers have consituted whatever "critical establishment" exists in this country. (Some people might regard the academy as the intellectual arm of our critical establishment, but academic criticism has all but lost interest in monitoring current writers and their work except insofar as these writers can be made to align with the critic's own external political objectives.) It has exerted a "monopoly" on what ultimately can be regarded as acceptable practive both of fiction-writing and of literary criticism in the same way New York film culture monopolized the critical discourse about film. All other practices are marginalized, even if in the long run they turn out to be more influential or more durable than those sanctioned by the establishment. (One thinks of Gilbert Sorrentino, a native New Yorker whose work--in criticism as well as in poetry and fiction--was essentially invisible to this establishment, and who could barely get an infuriatingly perfunctory obituary from the New York Times on his death.)

(And I don't mean this to be a slam against New York City per se. A critical establishment has to be located somewhere, and in our case New York is it.)

To this extent, I wonder if the blogosphere (the cybersphere more generally) is having/will have the same kind of effect on literary culture Bordwell believes it is having on film culture. It would seem that the litblogosphere has indeed demonstrated there are large numbers of people "out there" who take a passionate interest in books and writing, people who have not much been taken into account by the "mainstream" outlets of opinion (they're not just members of the "general public") but who clearly know literature just as extensively as those reviewers and critics sanctioned by the establishment and have intelligent things to say about it. I think a journey down the blogrolls on the right will demonstrate this to be the case, both through the blog posts themselves and through the comment threads many of them attract.

The establishment response to litblogs has lately been pretty uniformly and intensely negative. Bloggers are accused of being "pooters" who should leave the real thinking to those reviewers who get paid to do it. They sell themselves out "for a couple of review copies and a link on a blogroll." Even when blogs are ostensibly being praised, establishment types prescribe that they "are supposed to be fun and freewheeling, filled with quick snippets written in a breezy, conversational voice," as if this will safely distinguish them from the more serious work being done in the newspapers (!). Perhaps this is all justifiable criticism, but perhaps it is also the collective voice of panic being expressed by those whose authority "is eroding very fast."

Other Spaces, Other Things

To some extent, I agree with Adam Kotsko that "Meta-blogging is the greatest vice yet developed by humankind." Blogging about blogging can become just another variation on navel-gazing, and the triumphalist celebration of blogs by some prominent political blogs can be especially obnoxious. But at this point in the development of the weblog as a forum for serious discourse (at least potentially), Adam is right to "wonder what exactly can be done in a blog post." In some ways, seriously-intended blogs and blog posts can be an alternative to conventional print publications, both academic and general-interest, in others they are best seen as a complement to print, but it doesn't seem likely, or even desirable, that they simply imitate the conventions of journalism or academic scholarship. Therefore, those of us who do see a place for blogging in intellectual/literary discussion ought to be making the attempt to clarify, for ourselves and our readers, the distinctive nature of its contribution, what indeed "can be done" using this medium to engage in substantive debate or commentary about literature, philosophy, or any of the other traditionally "academic" subjects.

Surely it can't be that, as Adam puts it, blog posting is "best suited to matters that can be treated conversationally," if by "conversational" Adam means "casual" or "superficial." Certainly blog posts can be casual or superficial, but I see nothing in the nature of the form that requires they be so. In his own response to Adam's post, John Holbo makes a point that I want to echo: "Blog posts are short, but obviously no one thinks there are no arguments worth making at less than a thousand words." Good arguments and, in the case of literary criticism, compelling readings can indeed be made in a "short" blog post; some arguments and analyses would greatly benefit, in fact, if they were confined to 1500 words or so and shed themselves of the formulaic padding "long" forms sometimes superfluously require. Morover, I can't see why longer essay-posts treating a topic in a more expansively developed way are inherently impossible: I've read many such posts, and one would think that readers interested in the topic at hand would be willing to read a well-thought out treatment of it whatever the medium in which it's printed. (Screen fatigue seems to me a pretty inadequate excuse for avoiding a perfectly good piece of writing simply because it's online.)

Adam's claim is similar to a remark made recently by Joshua Marshall at Talking Points Memo. In a post otherwise defending blogging against criticism by certain print snobs, Marshall suggests that "blogging is an ephemeral form of writing. It's written quickly, usually forgotten quickly. It doesn't lend itself to that sort of rigorous writing and rewriting which is often the way you discover your ideas in your own mind." But even if some bloggers in practice regard their posts as something to be "written quickly," or even if the blogsphere in general is perceived to be crammed with such posts, that doesn't mean blog writing must be practiced in this way. Is there really anything inherent in the way words appear in cyberspace as opposed to the way they appear on a piece of paper that prevents it from being a medium for "that sort of rigorous writing and rewriting which is often the way you discover your ideas in your own mind"? Isn't "rigor" of this kind a product of the kind of effort being put forth by the writer rather than a function of the form? (And on the question of discovering ideas, see this post by Dorothy W at Of Books and Bicycles, in which she affirms that blogging "about what I think makes me have better thoughts.")

In a recent essay at Bad Subjects, Jodi Dean makes a point about the deliberative potential of blogs that one would think Adam Kotsko might appreciate:

. . .The fast pace of networked communication is a prominent meme. Opinions, image, and information are said to circulate rapidly through the blogosphere, like some kind of digital ebola or influenza. For most, this rapidity is a problem, or an excuse. It explains a lack of reflection, the need to respond immediately.

But theory blogs aren’t like this. A discussion on theory blogs might spread over half a dozen or more blogs over the course of weeks, like some kind of long running seminar. So, I post something about solidarity on I Cite, picking up or reiterating themes already in play on the Weblog and Posthegemony. The blog Before the Law posts a critical rejoinder, countered from different directions in multiple posts by various authors at Long Sunday and again at the Weblog. Sometimes, someone will accumulate the links and post a general guide to the conversation (the blogger from Theoria does this from time to time). Rather than a fast paced media sphere, this exchange is like a slow seminar, focusing on one narrow question that arises on its own, and is addressed over a longer period of time, giving those who engage it opportunity to read and reflect.

In other words, at his own blog and in his contributions to others, Adam has himself exemplified a kind of blog discourse and a kind of blog protocol that, while not substituting for those of academe, certainly have every claim to being taken seriously and not just dismissed as "talk," an offhand way of passing one's free time. Further, its' not just "theory blogs" that foster the kind of discussion Jodi Dean describes. Plenty of literary weblogs are focused on longer posts that are frequently part of cross-blog debates that at their best have a seminar-like feel without being pompous. (See, for example, this recent set of posts on Muriel Spark.) A similar desire to go beyond current book news and engage in more substantive commentary about current fiction underlies the Litblog Co-op's week-long discussions of selected small-press books and less-recognized writers. A number of film blogs have been participating in "blogathons" on specified topics, which generally result in lively and informative mini-essays. (A guide to the latest of these blogathons can be found here.) Whatever this kind of blog discourse may lack in conventional "rigor" is certainly balanced out by its immediacy and its enthusiasm.

But Adam seems most of all to be disillusioned by the comment threads that develop on some blogs, threads that devolve into "blogfights" and debates that "go nowhere." This has become a fairly common complaint. The blogosphere provides "scant room for debate and infinite opportunities for fruitless point-scoring: the heady combination of perceived anonymity, gestated responses, random heckling and a notional 'live audience' quickly conspire to create a 'perfect storm' of perpetual bickering." According to Alan Jacobs, "On many blogs the comments to a given post are 'closed' after a few days—no one is allowed to make further comments—usually because that helps to prevent the accumulation of comment spam, but also because so many threads degenerate into name-calling that the blog administrator has to shoo the belligerents along to another venue. And in any case both the blogger and the commenters have moved along to other posts, other ideas, other conversations." In general, it would seem, the comment space on weblogs has come to be seen as a place for partisan piling-on, where the converted speak to the converted, or else a kind of intellectual no-man's land, which the innocent traveller looking for disinterested debate enters at his/her peril.

I have never really understood what seems to me an obsession with comments among some bloggers. On the one hand, attracting comments is seen as a measure of a particular post's success, even of a blog's success on the whole. On the other, there is much lamentation when the comment count does indeed begin to climb but the tenor of the thread descends into vituperation and insult. I like receiving thoughtful comments on my own posts as much as anybody, but I don't consider a post a failure (whatever that might mean) if no comments ensue. Indeed, most of us are by now undoubtedly aware of this fairly consistent phenomenon: A short, trenchant if not particularly thought-out post receives numerous, equally trenchant comments, while a longer, more carefully developed post draws distressingly few. But this is really a problem only if you think "blogging" should be confined to the first kind of post and the second is something else--something that should have instead sought out those "other spaces for other things" that Adam refers to at the end of his post. Although presumably these are the very sort of blog posts that produces the "blogfights" of which Adam disapproves. Why then rule out of court the very possibility that blogs might aspire to something more substantive, even if they don't make so much use of their comment functions?

Ultimately, what "can be done in a blog post" is whatever it and its author want it to do. For now, most readers of blogs still prefer that a post remain reasonably brief and not otherwise the kind of discourse more profitably read in print. But to me this is mainly a matter of expediency: The portability of print is still an advantage, and that mode of reading that occurs in the proverbial easychair or the library nook does still have its pleasures. And these preferences may change, may already be changing. If readers do become fatigued with the "ephemeral," rapid-fire style of blogging, is the alternative simply to pronouce blogs deceased because only that style counts as blogging to begin with, or is it to explore the possibilites of a quieter, less anxious style? Perhaps not picking a blogfight is the best way to avoid it. Perhaps the real alternative to the cumbersome processes of academic publishing, which place too little value on novelty and spontaneity, and to the distance from readers imposed by print publication is not the kind of call-and-reponse weblog post that leads to the impulsive quarrels to which Adam Kotsko rightly objects but a style of webwriting that seeks to illuminate rather than provoke, that isn't defined by the number of comments it invites but remains open to critical dialogue nevertheless. (Because it does occur online, it would inevitably be subject to the commentary-through-linkage that is actually superior to the print conventions of citation and critique, precisely because of its own expediency.) If this is "conversation," so be it, but ultimately all forms of inquiry have to be conversational in this way, or they're not very scholarly in the first place.

The Culture of Impatience

According to Rachel Donadio:

. . .These days literary fiction has to contend with two factors that are increasingly central to the publishing process: timing and volume. In a market dominated by the big chain stores, if a novel doesn't sell a healthy number of copies in the first two weeks after its publication, its chances of gaining longer-term momentum are slim.

"The whole system is set up for impatience," said Drenka Willen, an editor at Harcourt whose authors include Umberto Eco and José Saramago. That "system" also favors the familiar name over the new voice.

That the "whole system is set up for impatience" seems to be confirmed by a recent study conducted by Lulu.com:

The average number of weeks that a new No. 1 bestseller stayed top of the hardback fiction section of the New York Times Bestseller List has fallen from 5.5 in the 1990s, 14 in the 1970s and 22 in the 1960s to barely a fortnight last year -- according to the study of the half-century from 1956-2005.

In the 1960s, fewer than three novels reached No. 1 in an average year; last year, 23 did.

“The blockbuster novel is heading the way of the mayfly,” says Bob Young, CEO of Lulu.com, referring to the famously short-lived insect.

The plummeting life-expectancy of a fiction bestseller, says Young, reflects the way that the publishing industry is unravelling, in an age of over-production, plus media fragmentation and now disruptive new technologies such as the Internet and print-on-demand: “The publishing revolution is nigh.”

Whether the "pubishing revolution is nigh" remains to be determined, but I certainly cannot see how writers are acting in their own best interests by giving in to this culture of impatience. And they do so when they trade off the greater control of their own literary destinies they might retain by going with a smaller press or with self-publishing for the residual distinction a known-name press must still offer. It's hard to know what else aside from this boost in self-esteem the large publishers do offer, since if the above numbers are to be believed, writers are not getting any greater visibility from them. Surely the more focused attention a smaller press might give an individual book would give that book more than the two-week window it apparently now has to gain notice in the prevailing "system." Writers could also help themselves by starting blogs, but if they have to do this even when being published by mainstream presses, it is again hard to see what good those presses are doing them.

Free-standing litblogs could also work against the culture of impatience, as I suggested in a previous post. Perhaps if we got away from the model of book blog as compendium of daily book news--whereby we are inherently dependent on the publishing business and its media voices for content, and thus implicitly sanction this business even while we occasionally question its practices--and thought of it as truly an opportunity for individual and independent voices to discuss literature and engage in a form of literary criticism, there would gradually develop a new model of "promotional intelligence" that values books for their long-term relevance rather than their short-term status as commodities. As Donadio herself says at the end of her article, "There is, after all, a difference between a reader and a market."

Ralph Waldo Emerson once advised that one should wait at least a year before reading any "new" book. I don't know that I would take it that far, but the principle he is enunciating is sound. Read the book for what it has to offer as a work of seriously-intended writing, not for its merely fashionable prominence, its place in line among the newly-printed. I, for one, have resolved to discuss more new works of fiction, but to do so at a sane and measured pace. I may discuss books that were published months if not years previously but that from such a distance still seem worth readers' attention, even if the two-week window has long fogged over. I would hope that some readers would be willing to rub away a clear space for them.

Ephemeral

In an e-mail to yours truly, Finn Harvor (whose blog is called The Screen-Novel Manifestos) observes:

. . .I think it's pretty much the case that online writing tends more toward ephemera than "permana". It's too bad, really, because I don't think most people posting online *want* their work to be read that way; it's simply that posting is easy and effective. I suppose the hope that a lot of more serious bloggers have is that one day their cyber-work will find its way into print. . . .

Is this really true? Is it the case that many bloggers harbor the hope they will be able to leave their temporary residence in the blogosphere and find a more permanent home in print? For those whose blogs are their only access to a community of readers, is the weblog a way to attract the attention of those who can usher their writing into the more upscale neighborhoods of print publishing?

Speaking for myself, I started this blog only after my writing had been appearing in print for a while. I found print-only publication (at least in the kind of journals and literary magazines in which my work appeared) to be frustrating because once your precious piece appeared it may as well have been transmitted to the outer reaches of the solar system for all the indication you got that anyone was reading it. And while people do complain about the "ephemeral" nature of blog-posting, once the current issue of a print publication is superseded by the next, only the library stacks stand between your intricately worked-over essay and publishing oblivion.

When I discovered the existence of literary weblogs, I immediately saw them as an opportunity to reach an actually existing audience and to communicate with other bloggers and readers in a reasonably palpable way. Doing so required altering my style and approach somewhat to meet the demands of the cyber medium, but to a great extent I really haven't had to define my ambitions down in order to adjust to the discursive conventions of the web. Briefer, more concise writing, less burdened with "scholarly" gestures, but otherwise no less "serious" in intent than what I wrote with print in mind. (And the ability to return to certain subjects partly compensates for length restrictions.) I now see my blog writing as a satisfying complement to whatever print writing I might continue to do, but even if I miraculously became a hit in print (I'm not anticipating the day), or even if I never published another word in a paper publication, I'd still see writing for the blog as a worthwhile thing to do.

Many of my litblog colleagues are indeed appearing more often in print (and doing a hell of a job at it), but I don't see much evidence they're planning to abandon their blogs for the presumed advantages of "print culture." The very notion that there is a "print culture" and a "cyber culture" seems to me pernicious. Good writing is good writing, insight is insight, whatever the medium in which they occur. In my opinion, we have reached the point where we're getting at least as much of these things on blogs as in the mainstream media. Long-form essays and criticism are still more often to be found in literary and scholarly journals, perhaps, but their time in cyberspace may yet come as well.

One Screenful

Adam Kotsko has a theory:

I might be wrong, but it seems like the optimal length for a blog post is something that's going to be one screenful on a 1024x768 monitor (that's the standard size for laptops and most non-stupidly-huge desktop monitors). For every paragraph you go over that length, your risk of going unread grows exponentially. If you go over two screenfuls, you virtually guarantee that people will scroll down, see that it's over two screenfuls, and either just say, "Screw it," or else put you on their "read later" list (i.e., forget to come back and read your post).

If this is true, then TRE is in a world of shit, since I'm afraid a majority of my posts violate the Kotsko one screen rule. A number of them surely spill over the two screen precipice as well. Does this mean most of my posts are languishing as "read later" bookmarks? Honest readers are inivited to set me straight on this.

Adam further speculates that although "The genre of 'blog post' is of course an evolving genre. . .it's going to turn out to be a short genre." However, "arguments unfolded in a short form can have their own kind of rigor" and "blogging can be a kind of discipline, rather than a kind of sinkhole." Adam seems to be suggesting that although most readers lack patience with extremely long posts, shorter but carefully considered posts can still be intellectually credible. The blog post doesn't have to compete with the longer printed essay, surely not with the scholarly article, but this doesn't make it inferior to these forms. It's different, and the protocols and conventions associated with it have yet to be fully worked out. I think this is what Adam is saying. Something like it is what I had in mind when I started The Reading Experience. To quote from my "Statement of Purpose": "I would like to test the proposition that the internet, in the form of the so-called "blogosphere," can provide a forum for a new kind of literary criticism, more compacted and concise, perhaps, than conventional print lit/crit, but serious criticism nonetheless."

I still think this is possible. I still hope an audience--a small one, perhaps--exists for such an endeavor. The trick is to be both concise and incisive. Or, as Adam puts it, a "short genre. . .doesn't have to mean a thoughtless genre."

Statement of Purpose

When I first began thinking about creating my own weblog, I thought I wanted to add another "literary weblog" to those so usefully surveyed by the Literary Saloon, the best of which include, in my reading, the Bookslut blog, Maud Newton, Golden Rule Jones, and the Saloon itself. But I eventually concluded I did not want just to provide yet more links to the daily literary news, perhaps with my own biting comments. Instead, I would like to test the proposition that the internet, in the form of the so-called "blogosphere," can provide a forum for a new kind of literary criticism, more compacted and concise, perhaps, than conventional print lit/crit, but serious criticism nonetheless.

Literary criticism is greatly in need of revitalization, as mainstream publications confine their coverage mostly to gossip and the book business, their book reviews becoming more and more perfunctory when not being eliminated altogether, while the academy, once entrusted with the job of engaging with works of literature, has mostly abandoned it altogether in favor of "cultural studies" and other forms of political posturing. I would hope, in fact, that this blog could work as a kind of bridge between the blogs and other general interest literary publications and what was once called "literary study"--which in my mind is simply the willingness to take works of literature seriously.

I would like, then, to provide consideration not just of individual works of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, etc. but also important developments in the literary world more generally, issues being debated in the literary press, as well issues related to the craft of writing. I will do so on a regular if not always daily basis, the idea being not to keep abreast of the literary version of breaking news but to pause and consider these broader issues, as well as the overall direction being taken in today's literary world.

Those looking for the latest and newest in the morning's papers might thus be disappointed with this blog. I hope, however, that I can substitute for the breadth of coverage found in the other literary weblogs (which I myself read almost every day) a little more in the way of critical depth, although I also hope readers find my comments to be lively as well as engaged.