And Another Thing

A few things happened recently. I started listening to Brainiac again, and have spent some energy stitching back together the night I saw Brainiac at the Canal St. Tavern - a night I've exploded in my head to being the last great night of my teenage years - with scraps of things I've found on the internet and in old journals. I mention this only because many of you will probably find that endeavor far more entertaining than what I'm about to get into, so feel free to stop reading this at any point and go there. Or go see Antonia's clever moths. Or turn off your computer, go outside, jump in some puddles. Your choice.

Which brings me to.

I just finished Scott Rosenberg's romantic and engaging biography of the rise of blogging, Say Everything. I think there's a small sliver of people I know who would get the same enjoyment and punching-the-air-and-shouting-"Right-On!" feeling I got while reading this book, and so I'm not quite sure who to recommend it to, but for what it is, it's a really fantastic book. Still, I'm not sure I would have written 1000+ words on the topic if it weren't for what I read next.

First I came across Emily Gould's "Why I write for free," itself an intelligent reposte to Benjamin Kunkel's "Lingering," published in n+1. I was intrigued by Gould's response, so I clicked on the original essay. "Lingering" once again put the dying-battery flashlight beam on the world of the internet, blogs, and how our online pursuits might possibly be cutting into "the hours set aside for Tarkovksy and Proust." Kunkel concedes to some of the benefits of the internet, be they discovering a new unpublished writer or watching a kangaroo give birth, but then goes on to sum up his perception of the internet with the following:

The internet often gratifies my curiosity and sense of humor, no small thing but nothing to confuse with whatever it is in me - something far more deeply interfused - that is gratified by poetry, philosophy, history, modes of writing that hardly exist online. What are the native species of internet prose? Op-eds, diary entries, aperçus, allusions, screeds, and scrawls of graffiti - worthy forms but marginal and perishable like little nodding flowers along a river.

Something snapped inside me. My own screed broke forth. "Marginal aperçus"? Would he say the same thing about Robert Walser's prose, Joan Didion's essays, or the photographs of Berenice Abbott? Isn't it possible that each of these things could have existed on the internet, had the internet existed when they were composed? And don't they in some sense exist there now?

Suddenly I found myself ranting about it at one in the morning while drinking champagne on a friend's (insanely amazing) terrace this past Saturday. Ranting, when I should have just been enjoying the view. Why does this conversation keep happening? Why does this medium make people so darned angry and melodramatic? And why does the fact that this argument exists make me so angry and melodramatic? I needed to say something.

Rosenberg's book spends a lot of time pitting the arguments of blogging proponents and blogging opponents against one another, arguments over saturation, function, bias, and control, among others. Rosenberg seems more sympathetic to the blogging proponents, understanding at least that blogs have a place and purpose in society, and can have great impact on our culture, politics, and individual lives. In Kunkel's essay, however, a main argument seems to be that the internet is nothing more than an alternative place for amusement. This contention smacks of elitism to me. It just makes me more than a little uncomfortable when anyone says "Hang on - you're not the ones who're supposed to be doing this. You're not properly trained. You aren't accredited. Leave that to us." To hold one artform higher than another is to swim in dangerous waters, filled with Censorship Electric Eels and the Jellyfish of Classism (the Sharks of Elitism? the Outboard Motors of Self-Righteousness?).

People who choose to create art do so because they feel compelled to express themselves. And no one should be forced into an intellectual pursuit. Those who are creating artistic movements outside of the 1s and 0s might have been doing so anyway. Those who spend time clicking empty links just to click something might have been playing Minesweeper, or kicking a rock around a parking lot, not necessarily reading Proust. People tend to be aware of who they are and what they're capable of producing, whether it's an entire art movement, or a few simple lines per day. Or nothing at all because we're too busy jumping in puddles.

It's interesting that Kunkel uses the examples of Proust and Tarkovsky, both of whom peddled nostalgia and certainly would appreciate the formation of this vast repository of nostalgia that is the internet. Kunkel does bend a bit, admitting that you can like Proust and Gawker, both Tarkovsky and YouTube, but I worry that he isn't thinking more deeply about the connection between Proust and Tarkovsky and what online memoirists are accomplishing. (As a personal aside, I, for one, like to think - or delude myself - that both would empathize with my own nostalgic pursuits, including the effort to reconstruct a single night from my memory.)

In any case, I'd contend that blogging, websiting, blopping, vlogging, tweeting, facebooking - whatever ugly verb it is you happen to engage in when you're plugged in - is not a question of time consumption and content, but instead a question of delivery. Jessa Crispin, in her review of a book on Kindness at The Smart Set, reminds the detractors that "the Internet is merely a medium, not anything homogeneous." (Though I would disagree with her later contention that in using the internet we are blocking out diverging opinions. First piece of evidence: Kunkel's essay, and this post.)

The delivery issue is brought up by Jacob Silverman in his essay on the VQR blog about Kunkel's essay (oh, these strange loops). Silverman feels that the internet excludes those who don't have access to computers from some sort of universal dialog: "if you're not online today, can you be part of the conversation?" Here's my question back: which conversation? The one happening on Metafilter about favorite childhood fantasy books, or the one happening on the front porch of the general store about the rising price of milk? I'm not saying it's okay to leave this part of the debate aside, but I think it's a fallacy to assume that ALL important conversations are occurring online. It's also unfair for opponents of the internet/e-readers/etc. to contend that they are doing so for the sake of the disenfranchised. I'm pretty sure the internet has brought more people to various conversations than it has excluded.

And there are many, many conversations happening, some overlapping, some not. Emily Gould points out the following, which I think is at the heart of why this whole argument feels so frustrating:

Kunkel's experience of the Internet bears no resemblance to my experience of the Internet, but then, that's the funny thing about the Internet, isn't it? No one's Internet looks the same as anyone else's, and it's that exact essential fungibility that makes definitive assessments like Kunkel's infuriating. The Internet isn't a text we can all read and interpret differently. It's not even a text, at least not in most senses of that word. The Internet is a chimera that magically manifests in whatever guise its viewer expects it to.

I may be misunderstanding what Kunkel is trying to say. He seems to come back to the idea that it's not so much about what the internet has to offer, but that we have no choice but to take what it offers, and apply it to our daily lives. But that makes me think he might be going about it all wrong. If the crux of what he's saying is that he feels like he's being dragged kicking and screaming into the world of the internet when he'd rather be reading Proust, then perhaps he's not kicking hard or screaming loud enough.

It is about choice. I chose to start this blog three years ago as a place to put my thoughts, an attempt to get myself in the habit of writing again. I was witnessing so much negativity on the internet, a morass of snark, and I wanted to establish a place for positivity and honesty, a place for memory and literary appreciation, inspired by the writing I was seeing on sites such as Sweet Juniper, The Morning News, and Maud Newton. Today it's still my choice to write what I write. Nothing magical is compelling me to log on and type in the little blank box other than the pleasure I discovered that daily writing gives me.

Kunkel writes: "Digital life also clearly undermines the patience with which people used [to] read and write." I'm afraid I must respectfully disagree. I can pretty much guarantee I would not be writing on a semi-daily basis if it weren't for this blog. I read far more books now than I ever did before I had a blog, even than before I got broadband. (And let's not forget that reading essays on blogs should be considered no less enlightening than reading essays in books. Well-rounded people will do both.) I think litblogging has done wonders for encouraging people to read, just as I think design blogs have inspired people to make things, and photoblogs and Flickr have inspired people to take more photographs. I write more letters, they just happen to be delivered digitally. I have always hated the phone, so I text or email more, and stay in closer touch now than I've ever been with many of my friends. I educate myself more on current events, because the access is easier to stories from multiple perspectives. I notice the world better, go on longer walks, performing constant searches with my eyes and ears. This urge towards creativity is inspiring. We are now in better control the means of production and the means of distribution. To deny the importance of this aspect of the internet is to ignore what we are capable of becoming, be it creative, or informed, or aware, or angry, or, if you want, simply amused.

Your choice.

(Not to revert to "blogger-speak," but I seriously can't believe I just contributed so many words and so much thought to an argument I find completely breath-wasting. Bottom line: The internet is a communication device. Use it - or don't - how you think it would benefit your life best. Now. Did you see Antonia's clever moths? Did you jump in any puddles? You might be much better off if you did.)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.