Through some recent discussions with a friend I’ve decided to take comments off the blog. Not that the comments were really a huge “problem” to begin with, but it’s more representative of something internal. I want this site to be a documentation of a cadre of various things, a few of which are broad topics like reading and fiction writing and how the two relate. This is not a place for me to collect comments as a show-and-tell watermark about how (un)popular I am, because that’s what it will become for me. I don’t want to also fall into the trap of actually inviting (really, begging for) comments via the el cheapo cattleprod question at the end of a post. This is perfectly fine if that is your goal, but I don’t think it’s for me.
The Internet suffers from an infestation of collaboration. No matter what anyone throws up here, it’s subject to universal distribution and scrutiny (see the share button at the bottom here?). We’re under immense social pressure to make ourselves “open source” and hear the opinions of others to mold the road before us. To be closed to avenues of exchange is considered pathological, the foremost affront to connectivity. I’m already on Twitter and Facebook and a few other things, so forgive me for saying that there’s no damned possible way I could be more social than I already am now.
If you really like what I’m writing, feel free to email me. Two writers that I follow rather closely have personally emailed me, unsolicited, and it meant more to me than two word compliment left in a status update.
Blogs are wonderful communication tools but they will not replace books — yes, even electronic books. But if they are declining in popularity (they may be, I’m not sure), it’s because the medium does not and cannot fit inside the social networking paradigm. You see, the book does not like you, nor does want you to click its “Like” button. It exists even if you don’t. It doesn’t care what you think of it or if you really have something to say about the universe it posits. The best you can do is scribble illegibly in its margins (the amphiboly of the word “margin” is delicious here). Authors wield their canons like cudgels, whacking you with its concreteness and ignoring your supplications. It’s only answerable to its creator, and guess what? The editor just gave the author a bigger cudgel and you’re about to be hit even harder.