Continuing the meta-blogging discussion, Steve Himmer argues that a blog is inherently a literary form,
with its own characteristics, different from any other:
A weblog, on the other hand, is all context—every post we read is read through the lens of the other posts we've read, and if you only read one post from a blog you're not reading the blog—which as a whole is the text, not the individual post.
This is part of what I was getting at earlier with my discussion of the difference between .plan and blog. They're different literary
forms, suited for different purposes and meant to be read in different ways.
Maggie touched on this, perhaps inadvertently, in a comment she left on Monday. Part of the reason she doesn't blog is to avoid recorded context:
Oh yeah, and I'm not writing for posterity either. My state of being is such a fluid thing that rapid brush-strokes are probably more accurate than well-archived completed works.
Maggie writes for her friends and for the present. Whatever context exists in her .plan is provided in the minds of readers who know her and who know what she has previously said. She writes for the moment; to archive her transitory thoughts would stifle her ability to express herself fluidly and thoughtlessly. I feel the same kind of inhibition if I try to write in a diary that's physically too pretty. In order to write a diary, I have to feel comfortable scribbling whatever floats to the top of my head and crossing it out if I want to. A .plan is the same. It's an electronic Etch-A-Sketch.
When I started writing this entry, I was planning to argue that a blog didn't have to be well-archived complete works
at all, that in fact it could be rapid brush-strokes
overlaid into a whole painting, but I seem to have written myself in the other direction. I can't imagine a blog that is the same as Maggie's .plan except for archiving; the mere consciousness of an archive would rob her jottings of any spontaneity. In the same way, my own consciousness that this entry will be archived forces me to develop my argument into something more than a bunch of thoughts.
Steve Himmer keeps adding a literary perspective to the meta-blogging discussion, a perspective that makes me kind of nervous to be playing with the big kids
like Shelley and Jonathon who post art, like photos and stories. Maybe they're literature, or getting close, but I would argue vehemently with anyone who tried to apply that word to my little blog, my letters to the friendly public. However, I'll agree with calling the blog a form of literature. Not every poem is literature, but poetry is still a literary form.
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