This Essay is to Me...
Like many geeks and nerds of my generation I grew up as an avid reader. A lot of this was helped along by my mother choosing to take me to her job at the public library instead of sticking me in daycare when I was small. I went on to major in English, and every room I inhabit somehow ends up covered in teetering, yet somehow still organized in Dewey Decimal, piles of books. Every time a major life change happened to me, I can remember what book I was reading. One of the books I read often when I needed something quiet and comforting, was Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader.
In it she some how managed to capture, better than I ever could, what makes old books, new books, scribbled in books, text books, books given to you by friends and lovers, books that changed your life, books that gave you a few moments pleasure, and books that made you think, such wonderful and unique objects in a person’s life. If you only ever read one essay in your life, read My Odd Shelf. It is the single greatest piece of non-fiction writing I have ever had the pleasure of discovering.
I came across an interview with Anne Fadiman lately, which is worth reading in whole, but she made an interesting point:
“At the moment, most blogs are terrible. Of course they’re terrible! The form is in its infancy. People who used to write in their journals are now writing in their blogs, and they haven’t yet learned the art of self-editing. But I think that in future, the blog may become what the personal essay was in the past. And I find that a hopeful prospect.”
As well as being an ardent book lover, I also adore technology, and view the Internet as a very positive tool for creativity and education. And I think there is a very good point to be made here. Most blogs are terrible. There is no editing, there is no selection process for what gets published, but among the millions of angsty teenage blogs out in cyberspace, there are a handful of amazing writers who would have no other way to write and be heard. A great example is the blog of Belle de Jour. Belle de Jour, also known as Brooke Magnanti, kept a blog of her life as high class London call girl while she was putting herself through grad school. Magnanti is an amazing writer. Her stories, I’d even call some of her posts essays, were beautiful pieces of writing that without the Internet I would never have had the pleasure of reading. In fact, her blog became so popular she received a book deal as well.
I don’t know what technology will do to the paper and glue book. I can’t imagine a world in which I can’t pick up beloved books given to me by friends, or reread my favorite childhood stories with the exact same covers, stains, and dogged eared pages that marked my first reading. But I do like to think that literature as an art will continue going strong. That with the larger audience now available to the authors’ of every possible interest and genre, given time the blog, too, will become an important literary genre.