Monday, September 20, 2010

'Tis little I - could care for Pearls - Who own the ample sea - Wuthering Expectations is 3 years old

The title is from, and trivializes, Emily Dickinson, #466.  With 700 posts averaging (at a guess) 500 words each, aside from whatever goes on in the comments, anyone with sense should occasionally ask whether this level of effort should be directed elsewhere.  And that’s not counting the reading, a separate but similar question.  Note that the useful question is not “Why read?” but “Why read so much?”  Do you have a good answer?

Wuthering Expectations has served one purpose I set for it.  Can I write with a certain level of discipline, a post every weekday (holidays and vacations excluded)?  Yes.  Can I write well with that discipline?.  Ongoing.  But see below.

Last year at this time, I quoted the critic William Pritchard, who says that he is attempting to do the same thing that I at least like to think I’m doing:


Under the confines of a thousand-word limit - or in more spacious situations double or treble that length - [the reviewer] can embrace limits as a provocation to speak out, sometimes doubtless recklessly, in order to elicit something essential about his subject.

Perhaps pricked by Pritchard, I’ve been reckless.  How else to explain four straight days writing about mummified cats?  Or two weeks on the great John Galt (seriously, The Entail is one of the great novels of the 19th century)?  Or the thankfully temporary transformation of the site into Weeding Expectations?  That last one was not so much recklessness as tomfoolery. 

None of these ideas were exactly calculated to get hits or followers or whatever the relevant statistic is.  No one is going to be paying me in pearls for any of that - hardly the path to being a Professional Reader.  But a blog gives a writer a radical freedom.  I try to use it.

A week on Rohan Maitzen’s anthology of Victorian criticism.  Sympathetic Character Week.  The Moby-Dick Fantasia.  Where else would I be allowed to do any of that?  Whether it was worth doing –

The thing is, here’s the thing.  Typically, almost always, invariably, I would hit the Publish button with a sense of defeat.  Whatever I was trying to do was only barely there.  So, the next day, I would sharpen my spoon and once again begin tunneling through the prison wall.  Recently, though, and not just once, I have put up pieces that were, I thought, well made.  They were written the way I wanted them to be written, and made the argument I wanted to make.  Maybe I’ve learned something.  Or maybe I’ve lost my judgment.  Dang worrisome.  What does it mean?  I had better write some more - maybe I'll figure it out.

I also recently wrote the single best joke in the history of Wuthering Expectations, “best” meaning, resembling a professional joke.  It is unfortunately buried in a post about Thomas Carlyle that, I would guess, almost no one read.  The perils of recklessness.

Last week, a number of other book blogs or commenters singled out my multiple posts – a week (or three days) on a single book (or mummified cats).  So I want to mention some other people who are also embracing the limits of blogging: Five Branch Tree, bibliographing, Interpolations, IveBeenReadingLately, Fred’s Place, the exhaustive A Common Reader, Anecdotal Evidence (the best written book blog, easily).  They write on a book or idea however they want, for however long they want.  They’re all quite different than Wuthering Expectations, and each other.  But they’re all free.  See, for example, what Brian did with nothing but a bit of an interview with Javier Marías and a Chardin still life.  Please remind me of other blogs that belong in this company.

A little while ago, I suggested that a few good readers was all that some writers should really ask for.  I meant some great writers, but, somehow, I, too, have a few good readers, people who look at my notes on a draft of a notion and then respond in ways that sharpen my thoughts and push me to new places.  Thanks!  Thanks a lot.  I own the ample sea.

25 comments:

  1. Congratulations for making the most of your radical freedom. I wish I could join in the conversation more often, but I frequently have no idea what you're talking about. (Fault is entirely mine!)

    ReplyDelete
  2. AR, happy 3-year anniversary. Your blog is a great source of insight and enjoyment. And thank you for the shout out, a handsome compliment, indeed. Best, Kevin

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fault is entirely mine - ha ha ha ha! Oh, no, no, no. I strongly disagree!

    So, for example, my recent four day chase of Moby-Dick. I thought that went really well. The parts worked as parts, the argument expanded, and at least one piece of it was even, as far as I can tell, original. But I was well aware, given the subject and the way I wrote it, that almost no one would be willing to wade in. Sub-Sub-Librarians and Gnosticism and Moby Dick in a bar in San Francisco's Tenderloin, castigating God for boring a thorn through his jaw. Maybe I didn't write that last bit. Anyway, I don't blame anyone who said "Maybe later \ someday \ never".

    Kevin, thanks much.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Congratulations! I just discovered literature blogs recently--and yours in one blog I am especially loving. Here's to a future filled with wonderful writing!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Happy blogiversary! (And there's an ugly coinage, though a useful one.) As I hope you already know, I love your blog: to me Wuthering Expectations exemplifies the best about book blogging in what I think I'd call its constructive idiosyncracy. It is always fresh, intelligent, and articulate--and funny too! So thanks right back at you from one of your faithful readers.

    ReplyDelete
  6. As a little dingy on that ample sea, I always love rowing over to Wuthering Expectations (although I missed the mummified cats and now want to find out what that is all about.) I'd say your spoon is working.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Happy blog birthday! I completely empathize with the feeling of defeat when pressing 'publish'...or frustration. "Where did all those great thoughts I had while reading this book flee to?"

    And thanks for the kind words. The posts at your blog, the ones you mention, and many many more provide much-needed invigoration for me.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Congratulations on three years! I will have to check out the other blogs you mention, although my reading blogs time is severely limited these days...

    ReplyDelete
  9. Happy blogiversary, and many happy returns! I must echo everything Prof. Maitzen and Dwight say, and add that I personally find your doing this every day to be really impressively disciplined.

    And I'm glad to find out I am embracing the limits of blogging. I thought I was ignoring them and doing something almost actively hostile to the form. But no, you're right, that's how I ended up here--by dealing with the form in a way I could, for my content. Sweet.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Well, thanks for all of this. Much appreciated. One post a year like this doesn't seem out of line.

    The "embracing the limits" formulation seems perverse, doesn't it? But it's true. Word count, images, ratio of sense to nonsense (I may have been testing the limits of this one), quotations, links. There's a lot to play with. But that's the case with any form.

    Constructive Idiosyncracy would, by the way, be a good name for a blog.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Oh, how I loved Sympathetic Character Week. I think of it often, and fondly.

    I don't wade in daily, but I do read, and am enriched and refreshed. Thank you so much for all this, whatever it all may be and become.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Happy (belated) blogging day! And thanks for the plug for FBT. Much appreciated. Equally so, the other links you provided. They'll be on the blogroll soon.....

    ReplyDelete
  13. Jenny, thank you. I want to re-create Sympathetic Character Week, with a different subject. Beauty, what is beauty in literature, I think. I may write about that soon, have a preview to get ideas. The problem with that week was that it was a lot of work, way more than usual, and the "beauty" idea will likely be harder.

    Brian, many thanks. My pleasure.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Well done as always, WE. I know I haven't been a good blog buddy lately (and you and your buddy Nicole even read Clarel!) but that doesn't mean I'm not in awe, some of the time, checking in regularly. Congrats, great work, continued health and welfare.

    ReplyDelete
  15. zhiv - Thanks. I just assumed you were writing. You don't have to confirm that, by the way. "So, how's the dissertation going" - never, never ask an ABD grad student that question. I presume the same etiquette holds for other writers.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Congrats on the 3rd year anniversary-I totally admire your ability to stay focused.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Stay focused, says someone reading and writing about every individual Katherine Mansfield story. Thanks, and same to you, mel!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Congrats on three years, AR. I love what you do here -- today's post was particularly fun :)

    ReplyDelete
  19. Why thanks. Wait'll you see tomorrow's. That's where I drive the bolt home, so to speak. I'm not sure what that means.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Congratulations on three years! I'm always happy to pop in and learn about writers of whom I've never heard. And you got me to read crazy Carlyle! I owe you one for that--you may take that however you please ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  21. Oh, you're very welcome. Let's see, what crazy thing should I try to goad you into reading next?

    ReplyDelete
  22. Congratulations. That's stamina you've got there.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Belated congrats on your three year blog anniversary, Amateur Reader! You've got a great site here, but you don't need me to tell you that. Although I haven't been blogging quite as long as you (I think my blog's a month "younger") and I don't post anywhere near as frequently as you, I can certainly relate to the spoon tunneling out of the prison syndrome that you touch on in this post. Anyway, here's to at least another three years of Wuthering Expectations. Long live you and your blog, etc.!

    ReplyDelete