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The 3rd house in astrology is associated with writing, conversation, personal thoughts, day-to-day things, siblings and neighbors.
Wednesday, October 29, 2003Camille Paglia throws down a challenge to bloggers
Paglia has lots to say (I know, shocking, isn't it?) in this interview at salon.com (unfortunately, it's by subscription - it's fun, though, if you can read it). At the end of the 6-page article featuring her usual no holds barred views on Iraq, the Democratic contenders, Rush Limbaugh, Madonna, etc., etc., she has this to say about blogging:
Blog reading for me is like going down to the cellar amid shelves and shelves of musty books that you're condemned to turn the pages of. Bad prose, endless reams of bad prose! There's a lack of discipline, a feeling that anything that crosses one's mind is important or interesting to others...
If bloggers want to break out of their ghetto, they've got to acquire a sense of drama and theater as well as a flair for language. Why else should anyone read them? And the Web in my view is a visual medium -- I don't log on to be trapped on a muddy page crammed with indigestible prose...
As a writer, I'm inspired not just by other writing but by music and art and lines from movies. I think that's what's missing from a lot of blogs. Most bloggers aren't culture critics but political or media junkies preoccupied with pedestrian minutiae and a sophomoric "gotcha" mentality. I find it depressing and claustrophobic. The Web is a wide open space -- voices on it should have energy and vision.
Well okay then.
More on framing the issues
I just found this interesting discussion of the George Lakoff article I posted about yesterday. I have to run and want to think about this further, so I'll post more later.
Just what the Blogosphere needs
I just found this interesting post on what blog readers want to see more of. As a neophyte blogger, I'm still forming my ideas on what I want to do with my blog. I've been going along, posting whatever interests me, and reading other blogs and thinking about what I like.
I see some great stuff in the personal blogs where people write movingly about their lives. They write about things that consume them and that they’re passionate about – their kids or their pregnancies, their work, aging parents, travels, questions about where their lives are going. I can write about political things, movies, social activities, a dinner I cooked, a nice walk around town. But as a single person, I can’t write about my dates, my relationships past or present - I don't mean just the details, but the bigger questions and thoughts that they inspire. Those things inspired me when I was writing for my writer’s group. But the Internet? Way too public, for numerous reasons.
I remember in my writer’s group we discussed how much you can write about other people, whether you should fictionalize memoir writing, change names, etc. Even fiction writers get in trouble when they mine their own lives a little too closely. I suppose it depends on how you handle it. But that’s part of the challenge for good writing, I guess. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of blather.