In the past I had numerous blog on various topics and one personal blog with a kitchen sink approach. That blog was probably the most interactive and better read though the others were much more focused and I’d given much more thought and care to their organization, content, etc.

In the personal blog I just said what when and how I wanted to with no or close to no regard to readership. I still don’t care or check numbers but I do struggle with who am I writing for (the answer is usually me but then I fear writing for me first and foremost means others will be bored to tears reading what is essentially my diary and record keeping…).

Anyway I had a similar post up on my own new blog (after keeping others for about 5 years prior) trying to figure out what and how I was blogging and who for.

For a new blog with no specifically stated topic (and for any blog too) your blog is engaging and interesting and readable. And you have a good number of comments too. (I’m in the middle of starting and ending and not knowing what I’m doing with so many blogs, that I don’t know which to link to in my username here…)

jessica: This blog loves you right back.

wordnerd: DFW has a point there, doesn’t he, at least when it comes to Mailer and Roth? (I know less about Updike.)

DC: The blog’s going fine. You HAVE set up a style, even if you don’t see it.

Wordnerd: You can get a lot of credit from a lot of people by volume alone. Just look at the outsized praise for David Foster Wallace when he died. As far as I can tell, he acquired his high status mainly because he wrote an oversized book and packed too much stuff into it. Smart guy, I’m sure, but I couldn’t make it more than 100 pages into Infinite Jest. Updike was at least more readable, and probably more read, and more prolific too, although in more manageable pieces. I think the only Updike book I have ever actually read it Rabbit, Run, which must not have inspired me to read any more of them. Seemed like a cheerful enough guy when I saw him in interview clips after he died, but I didn’t read the obits.

Ruth: I think you’re onto something about structure being an oxymoron when it comes to blogs, and yet many of the best blogs seem to acquire a kind of structure and shape as the posts accumulate. As I said, I am still trying to settle on a style that works for me, although I do enjoy being able to mix things up a bit in terms of topics, formats, length, etc.

Carol: Okay, you have a deal. I promise that I will only use “meta” as a standalone adjective from now on, as in, “Dude, this post is so meta!” Since I probably won’t write about metaphysics very often, your single exception might suffice. By the way, I did notice that I had used “meta” twice in this post in that annoyingly trendy way, and I considered changing one of them to something else, but I decided to leave them as is. I do usually edit or at least proofread posts before I publish them, but I often let infelicities like that go. It is a blog, after all.

2. (this mostly to Ruth) As you suggest Updike’s life looks uneventful to some. I think he found it extremely full. He had severe psoriasis, a most unfortunate and painful disfiguring ailment, the occasion for his various travels to sunny shores, where he found grist for his fiction mill. He was a practicing Christian, not that I get it myself, but it clearly mattered a great deal to him, the source of solace and anxiety in equal (perhaps equal) measure. He won major literary awards was lauded by many and excoriated regularly by some critics who wanted him to write different books than the ones he wrote. I would consider both of those experiences eventful. He had several children, and later, stepchildren, never an uneventful experience. He was, presumably, unfaithful at least to his first wife; infidelity is a principal expression of human moral frailty in his books. As far as seeing and judging and describing the lives of his characters, perhaps that was not a substitute, but the transformation of his seeing the lives of his fellows. into something he could share with others.