when george brought up the sins of backblogging, i thought, well, at least you post every once in a while.
i'm not interested in seeing this thing die off anytime soon, though the evidence seems to indicate otherwise. i'm following other folks' regular entries (all compelling, by the way), and this weird thing is happening. i've actually begun to feel guilty, like (dave e) is a whimpering pet, able to feed itself on a blogroll, but neglected nonetheless. this sensation may very well be familiar to the elder statesmen of the online commentariat, but i'm not excited about its arrival. i have other neglected writing to feel guilty about.
the guilt is, of course, absurd. my fragmented manifesto here was supposed to be about shirking the duty to post, worrying little about being precise, rough-drafting embryonic notions. i seem to recall an extended discussion in which i paraded the idea of confession-free-of-guilt around, insisting that this thing's* imperfection would be its proud banner.
so, is the above some sort of forced confession? an apology to my weblog? good grief.
ok. now i've written and posted something. whew. i feel better.
[warning: wreckless promise about future blog entries ahead:] finished neil sheehan's a bright shining lie: john paul vann in vietnam, the other day. no more books about vietnam for me, thanks. i'd like to write about this one, though. as biographical history, a bright shining lie makes a strong case for vast historical survey in the guise of life-writing. and vice versa. sheehan's method, constructing a very ambitious narrative that rests almost exclusively on biographical supports--almost every major event in the vietnam conflict takes the narrative form of a biography of its central figures--is an epic demonstration of the interdependence of life-writing and history. what is striking is the absence of generic hierarchy between the two; the narrative recognizes that stories of lives and stories of events tell each other. i feel as if i've just read a collective biography of vann, david halberstam, daniel ellsberg, william westmoreland, everyone in vann's family, several generations of vietnamese generals and political leaders, about a hundred u.s. generals, a thousand colonels, and a million lieutenants. a vast book. more later.
finishing joan didion's political fictions. more later, but stumbling on this book was fortunate timing. frankly, i needed someone like didion to remind me to take a step back from the horse race for a little bit.
* strange. "this thing" feels better than "blog."
Posted by dave at October 22, 2003 5:10 PM | TrackBackHaving just fed my own neglected furby . . . er . . . blog this evening (doesn't a ping sound like e-pet food?) I was happy to see that you too have posted. Would like to talk to you about the history vs. biography question soon, since it's a tension I don't address at all in my diss, but hope you will address all over the place.
Let me start with this. Hayden White says all history is necessarily fictional because of its narrative format. We all know that biography is subject to the same fictionalization, and as you say "stories of lives and stories of events tell each other." If this is the case, what's the difference between a life story and and event story?
Posted by: Ryan at October 22, 2003 9:01 PM | Permalink to CommentOn the thing thing:
Interesting Elouise Oyzon had a post with the title "Velveteen Rabbits" today Oct. 23, 2003
http://weez.oyzon.com/archives/000286.html
Her opening sentence reads: "An interesting thing has happened over the last few days, maybe longer (Thing - yes thing)." and embeds a link to a comment on Liz Lawley's linguistic proclivities (a thing for the word "thing").
Be fun to canvass bloggers:
Do you ever refer to a blog as a thing?
Would you ever refer to a blog as a thing?
And how could its nuances translate outside of English?
Posted by: Francois Lachance at October 23, 2003 12:05 PM | Permalink to Commentryan, in a very preliminary way, i'll say that if a meaningful difference exists between biography and history, it has to do with each one's ostensible aim: to explain something. (of course, in the weird books i like, explanation ISN'T the point). there are narratives that purport to explain the subject and there are those that explain the event. each has its several formulas (e.g., family, birth, experience, growth, properly completed subjectivity, applicability to reader; community, context, conflict, negotiation, power, "larger forces at work," applicability to reader's community). i like the sheehan book because its explanation of "vietnam" takes the form of a collective biography and its biography of john paul vann takes the form of large-scale history. in other words, it accomodates AND unsettles the unsatisfactory distinction i make in the above parentheses.
clearly, this is an issue i want to address in a more rigorous way.
then again,
francois, yes, you've caught me hiding behind a word behind which i can't really hide. i love "thing," a nonspecific specific. "blog" still sounds focus-grouped to me. "thing" fantasizes something locatable, but frees me from the obligation to locate it, right? it's just some vague artifact -- maybe i'll be dutiful and post, or maybe i'll just look in on it every once in a while...
Posted by: dave at October 23, 2003 2:50 PM | Permalink to CommentReading this again some months later. I can kinda grove on refering to it as a "blog thing".
There have been of late some comparisons of blogs to pubs. Sometimes they feel more like salons. I do like the suggestion of "blog thing" it's not so locatable in some kind of public/private analogue of other-governed spaces. Indeed blogs in some ways set up the dynamics for a type of private space to emerge from the interchange between regular readers and writers. Hence the language of coterie and regulars, salon and pub. But there is a difference with blogs... a search engine can help one relocate where one left their hat (or a glove) or some other vestimentary trace. And resume a conversation. Very unsalon. Very unpublike. Tres blog thing.
Posted by: Francois Lachance at March 24, 2004 9:14 PM | Permalink to Comment