As I wrote last week in posting the Wikio rankings, bloggers sure like to blog about blogging. Sure enough, madness followed back-to-back posts by Andy Crouch (shouldn’t it amuse us all if those vault him into the top spot next month?). Too many “why I blog” posts followed to link to.
I already wrote my mission statement five years ago, so I acted on the fact I had nothing new to say by saying nothing (it doesn’t always work that way.) Until I read a monstrously long John McPhee interview in the Paris Review.
Like maybe 10,000 words into it you have this exchange:
I suppose one of the hard things for a young writer is to learn that there’s no obvious path.
MCPHEE
There is no path. If you go to dental school, you’re a dentist when you’re done. For the young writer, it’s like seeing islands in a river and there’s all this stuff you can get into—where do you go? It can be a mistake to get too great a job at first; that can turn around and stultify you. At the age of, say, twenty-one, you’re in a very good position to make mistakes. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four—each time the mistakes become a little more costly. You don’t want to be making these mistakes when you’re forty-five. But the thing is, in steering around all those islands, and finding currents to go around them, they’re all relevant.
Do you worry about outlets diminishing for writers?
MCPHEE
I’m really concerned about it. And nobody knows where it’s going—particularly in terms of the relationship of the Internet to the print media. But writing isn’t going to go away. There’s a big shake-up—the thing that comes to mind is that it’s like in a basketball game or a lacrosse game when the ball changes possession and the whole situation is unstable. But there’s a lot of opportunities in the unstable zone. We’re in that kind of zone with the Internet.
But it’s just unimaginable to me that writing itself would die out. OK, so where is it going to go? It’s a fluid force: it’ll come up through cracks, it’ll go around corners, it’ll pour down from the ceiling.
So two thoughts.
First, I wouldn’t say that Emily Sauter has things totally figured out, but head over to Pints and Panels to see her “beer reviews in sequential tradition,” otherwise known as cartoons. This weekend because I was clicking to read a variety of blogs I’ve never seen before because I was following the Beer Bloggers Conference on Twitter I was struck by how some blogs are a whole lot different, some not so much.
Pints and Panels, which I’ve been following since meeting Em at the Great American Beer Festival, falls into the former category. But that’s not the point. That Em and most other bloggers have more future than I do (geez, that looks dreary in black and white, but isn’t meant that way) doesn’t necessarily mean they see it more clearly than I (already feeling better), but they are going to be around for more of it (shoulders sag). And they are going to find different currents.
Second, the beer analogy (this is a beer blog, after all). You should already have it figured out, but one example. Only hours before Will Meyers of Cambridge Brewing brewed his first beer using a “sour mash” other small-batch brewers were telling him he was crazy, that he’d destroy his brewery. If you’ve ever tasted Cerise Cassée you’re glad he didn’t listen.
One more bit of navel gazing: I Am a Blogger No Longer
Hey Stan-
It will be a while before I’ll be able to raise sufficient interest to dare touch the third rail of beer again, but I do want to raise one related side note to your post. As an aside from the questions I raised, I started thinking about perhaps one more important one: what sets your blog apart from the other 537 out there (according to some listing)? If the answer is nothing and you want it to be nothing, let me say upfront so you don’t send me any emails or website comments, I am very happy for you. But point of view and points of distinction are important. Whether it be an acerbic wit, a poignant penchant for storytelling, a driving desire to portray fellow souls, or the use of comics to illustrate reviews, creativity and value-added differences are what most bloggers should, in my opinion, be striving for. We don’t really need another boring, on-line tasting notebook, do we? (For those that think we do, again, no emails…)
Best,
Andy
Just as long as they leave the whole Annual Yuletide Christmas Winter Solstice Photograveure Internet Diary Contest thing to me they can do what that want.
I’m not really sure how your two points proceed from the McPhee quotes, but assume it’s more my failings as a reader than yours as a writer. I’m just happy that John McPhee is still alive. Had no idea. Hadn’t seen his work in the New Yorker in a while, and the last book sure seemed like a retrospective.
And of COURSE a proper interview with him would be thousands and thousands of words long… the man doesn’t do short pieces!
Bill – First, McPhee. The interview is worth the time. Recent can be a relative term when days are flying by but it seems like a piece about his father appeared only a few months ago (so it could have been spring)in the New Yorker and more recently there was one about lacrosse. In the interview he talks about the challenges of finding time and energy to do long-term research but it sure appears we’ll be reading more from him. And he’s still teaching.
As to the points, perhaps a stretch on my part (to be honest).