OLD GUESSES

Some good, some bad. Take this post from two years ago, for example. It mocked the proliferation of blogs. I claimed that "like much else on the Web, blogs would dry up if readers had to pay for them."

Bad guess. Blogs are more popular than ever, paid and unpaid. Rabbits are less prolific.

April 12, 2004

BLOGGER STARDUST

A friend asked (this is true): "How's the blogging life?" My reply: "Underpaid and overrated." The overraters tend to be johnnys-come-lately who believe they've had a revelation when, in fact, all they've done is plugged in.

The underpayers are everyone else -- in other words, the readers. The truth is that, like much else on the Web, blogs would dry up if readers had to pay for them.

They might dry up anyway. Blogs are said to be proliferating and their influence spreading. Yeah, like stardust. I've noticed lately that even at no charge some of the best blogs have already gone silent. For instance, the literary MobyLives went into hibernation many months ago. Earlier this year, on Jan. 5, readers were told that "Moby is almost done resting." It's still not back.

That was another bad guess, sort of. MobyLives eventually came back in different form. Now it sounds off as a literary podcast, MobyLivesRadio.

Moving right along:

One of the savviest and earliest of the personal culture commentators was Marc Weisblott. His Weisblogg always seemed to me ahead of the curve in style and subject. Then he quit. Why? "I gave up the blog with grander heights in mind," he says, "specifically a project where the blog will be sponsored and have a print mag affiliation -- and, of course, those have been slow to reveal themselves ... a meeting a month ago and then ... well, waiting."

My question prompted him to bring back his URL, I'm glad to report. Weisblott says he's "dipping back into the action, but meanwhile reconstituting some of [his] past efforts." So go look. ...

Bad guess again. (Here's why.) But Weisblott is nothing if not persistent. Which makes it a good guess. He's back once more, this time in total gossip mode with the longed-for print affiliation.

Finally, an unmitigated good guess (although not mine):

Postscript: From a reader: "Golly, a man in a snit -- and Goddamit!, well done & good for you and whatever slim justice there is in these mean times! But I feel exempt from the general firestorm, as you're the only blogger I read.  Still, a little inconsistency in the argument -- Paul Krugman is nothing more than a paid blogger, as was Edmund Wilson, or Malcolm Cowley, or Mencken and other assorted smarties. You guys do the work for us dummies. I mean, I didn't have to be a whale to get a fix on 'Moby Dick,' but I do praise Big Herm for the effort in my behalf, and he helped a lot.

"Furthermore, as an advocate of Chaos Theory, these are glad and pleasurable days. The disintegration of the Bush cheap-jack-C.B-DeMille-plaster-board-and-plastic-executive stockade is lousy special effects but wonderful spectacle. May it prevail, although instead of Vic Mature and Hedy Lemarr we have a cast from Todd Browning's 'Freaks.' Strictly Republic Studios, but great entertainment. He Is Risen!"

The reader signs himself "The Baptist John" to distinguish himself no doubt from the Bible guy.

May 7, 2006 11:07 AM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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This page contains a single entry by Straight Up | published on May 7, 2006 11:07 AM.

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