Blogging: Not In My Backyard?

"Riveted" is the only word with which I can describe the way I read, clicking from page 1 through to page 10, Emily Gould's tell-all article "Exposed" from the May 25, 2008 issue of the New York Times Magazine. I don't even remember the waves of web browsing I rode to get there- maybe a link from PopSugar, via Entertainment Weekly, via 815 Sentences About Lost? I lost track. It was the cover story, but somehow I missed it when it published these (almost exactly) two years ago. Gould is undeniably a talented writer, and her ruthlessly honest recounting of the personal and professional turmoil she experienced in her tumble down from faux-stardom as Gawker gossip blogger was magnetizing: in dishing brashly on her and others' lives, Gould wrote often vicious aspersions of vulnerable media figures while simultaneously assuming she deserved shielding from the online voyeurs she catered to.


But those reasons aren't what really propelled me to read the piece from first sentence- "Back in 2006, when I was 24, my life was cozy and safe."- to last- "I still think about closing the door to my online life and locking [the negative comments] out, but then I think of everything else I’d be locking out, and I leave [my blog] open." I think Gould's frank examination of modern society's absorption of technology like a dishrag mopping up spilled milk touches on a key concept too often overlooked: the eradication of writers' privacy.



Privacy issues borne by the Internet's highly-connective nature have centered on Facebook and other social media tools. But what about the destruction of the protective barrier between writer and reader? Anyone writing on a digital platform arguably exposes themselves to the judgement of a vast, unknown audience. I have no way of taking a name-tagged head count of who even reads these posts, just as the physicians who compose research articles for the journal websites published by the company I work for have no control over the medical community's response to their work. Gossip bloggers like Emily Gould, and her manifold counterparts on Gawker-kindred sites from Jezebel to Philebrity to TMZ- subject themselves to the brutality of the public's backlash, as Gould experienced and admitted was justified.

But what about bloggers, and online journalists, and authors maintaining homepages, who are just trying to adapt their craft to the new medium? These people haven't sacrified integrity, as Gould and other bloggers at times have, for page hits. Yet appraisal comes with the territory of writing online, doesn't it? From the aggravation of a flooded inbox- which New York Times essayist Ben Yagoda writes about in The Perils of 'Contact Me'- to nasty comments on blog posts- scrapbook hobbyist and mom Jillian Deiling Cassity responded directly on her blog Scrappy Jilly to one such antagonizer- perils abound for even the most innocent of online writers.

To be heard, writers in 2010 need to migrate to an online platform. But that means the danger of encountering the dark underside of the Internet, even when such animosity is unprompted. One commenter on Gould's article wrote:

"I ask myself why, in a world where we are so aware of the greater picture around us, a certain small-minded blog culture is so thriving? Is it just a need for entertainment? For connectedness? In part, I see it as a need to create a small and manageable focus in a world where there are such incomprehensible and insensible happenings occurring."

I agree. And I also think the potential for anonymity on the Internet emboldens both the bloggers and the responders who slander, whereas the honorable, ethical writers trying to carve a path for themselves through the brambles of the current state of publishing are doing just the opposite: highlighting their bylines in hopes of discovery. The paradox is when these phenomena overlap, and the good guys get hurt.

Here's blooking at you, kid

Yesterday's Paper Cuts post on Nobel-laureate Portuguese writer José Saramago's blog-turned-book poses an interesting question: can blogs become literature? Saramago's collection of blog posts, entitled "The Notebook", renders his online journal entries as essays. Yet in his review Gregory Cowles deems the vignettes "too topical and too fleeting to count as literature", albeit smartly and compellingly composed. For Cowles there is a marked difference between writing done in an Internet framework, and more traditional composition. Apparently Saramago agrees, because as Cowles notes, the author's last post reads,

“Until another day? I sincerely think not. I have begun another book and wish to dedicate all my time to it. You will see why, if it all goes well.”

I have to say I disagree with both men.

Saramagos' litblogging effort has antecedents; according to Wikipedia, "blooks" have existed for a number of years, a trend with enough traction to institute the Lulu Blooker Prize in 2005. Tucker Max, famed chronicler of drunken encounters, published New York Times bestseller I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell in 2006, writing in a genre he calls "fratire". The book based on Julie Powell's cooking blog "The Julie/Julia Project" was made into the film Julie & Julia in 2009. Colby Buzzell, a U.S. Army machine-gunner who spent a year in Iraq, turned his 2004 blog into a captivating and acclaimed memoir, My War: Killing Time in Iraq.

The breadth of these examples suggests the wide range of possibilities for transforming blogs into respectable- or, at least, commercially successful- prose. A Business Week article titled "'Blooks' are in Bloom" quotes Eileen Gittins, CEO of online publisher Blurb.com,

"We believe there's a market [for book-publishing services] for every single blogger out there. Charles Dickens originally serialized his novels in magazines. We are seeing much the same thing happening today, with blogs."

The blogosphere is rife with well-written material, and writers that prioritize literary craft. The tempest of new media is all about breaking down walls, between interface and user, writer and reader, professional and layman, traditional publishing and cutting-edge; why can't we discard the boundary, too, between blogging and "real" writing? I'll concede that the extension of electronic writing into the formalized publishing realm has its limits: 19-year-old U Chicago undergrads Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin's recent book Twitterature, a compilation of reimagined classic works in 20-character-tweet form, makes me gag (the Huffington Post writes that it "kicked all that is sacred about the written word in its proverbial scrotum"). But Twitter, like the blogosphere, does house the literary-minded among the rabble. An informal GalleyCat poll at the end of last year found "1,790 novelists, 9,139 poets, 19,490 journalists, 28,529 authors, and a staggering 99,082 writers on Twitter."

Basically I respect the fact that Saramago and Cowles are pigeonholing blogging and publishable writing, because I share readers' and authors' fear that cultivated writing will perish without its own limelight. But I also think there's room for blogs- earnest, finely written, ones especially- to evolve off the screen in their own right, not as a replacement for traditional books. So, I'd answer Saramago's ultimate question, "Until another day?" with a frank "Yes."