Last week the "secular right" blogger ZMan - who I had been reading regularly for several years - apparently died suddenly of natural causes; and I find that has saddened me more than might be expected.
The reason seems related to this strange and recent literary form of blogging, which I have been reading for more than twenty years, and myself doing regularly for fifteen.
In particular to the distinctive relationship that may develop (inwardly, perhaps wholly in imagination) between a blogger and his readers - and vice versa.
To read and get-something-from a blog, it really needs to be a personal thing - either frequent, or else extensive. This is because there needs to be a persona behind the blog; we need to be aware of a person behind the opinions.
(On the flip side; for a blogger to sustain his work sufficiently; he must himself be motivated by the process of blogging - and by its opportunity for presenting miscellaneous ideas freshly, and without being subject to overview.)
And - while there obviously must be a significant degree of common interest to keep reading a blog; there need not be any very complete "agreement". For instance, several of my long-term favourite bloggers long-term have been orthodox and traditional Roman Catholics - people such such as Bonald at the Orthosphere, who I've been reading for a couple of decades.
Instead there has to be some kind of basic affinity with the blog persona - but especially with the person we infer behind that persona. I say infer, because we don't need to know much specifically about the blogger "in real life" - so long as what we do know is honest and unpretentious.
I personally find it very irritating/ intolerable when bloggers are trying to impress me, especially when they try to stimulate may admiration or envy! - no matter what other valuable qualities they have. And there are many such bloggers, and unfortunately their need to brag seems to feed upon itself, and get worse.
In other words, we keep reading a blog attentively because (to use an English phrase) we have come to believe that the blogger is Basically A Good Bloke. That is far more important than a close fit of specific convictions or opinions.
But, as the pretentiousness/ bragging aspects makes clear - bloggers change; and someone we begin liking may evolve into somebody we find intolerable - and so we bale out from readership.
Beyond that, because blogging needs to be relatively high volume, interest is maintained by insights - and a good blogger needs to generate plenty of these to sustain attention.
Blogging is, I think, mainly a stimulus; rather than a medium for conclusive argument. So, a blogger like ZMan kept me reading partly because he had many insights that seemed personal rather than (as with mainstream journalism) merely parroted; and partly because I found what he wrote stimulating.
Even though I often disagreed with it both ultimately and superficially; and even though I think his blogging was constrained by the constraint of monetization and pseudonymity, which prevented it from achieving the highest levels of the form.
(I have come to believe that professional writers very seldom generate first rate work, although they may produce a large amount of second and third rank work - furthermore I think all the greatest writers did something else, worked some other "job", before they wrote their greatest work. Writers who have done nothing but write as adults; never, I think, attain the highest levels.)
I think readers usually judge a blog by its best, rather than its average, level - just so long as the gaps between the good stuff is not too great. So long as we retain our basic liking for the blogger - we don't much mind the duds.
And in fact we cannot have the peaks without the troughs, as we see from the history of even the greatest artists. Even so supreme and natural and artists as Mozart, for instance, continued to produce dud operas and concertos even during his greatest phases of achievement and right up to his death.
To do our best, we must take risks; and when we take risks we shall sometimes (or often) fail. And we can learn much from acknowledging our failures - but first the failures have t happen.
At any rate, blogging benefits from a careless attitude of freedo-, and the ability to shrug-off those times when posts don't take-off or just don't gel.
As an example of a recent example of the kind of blog post I like best; here is (non-famous) blogger Irish Papist; with a very personal and honest, free-associational development of ideas on the theme: Everything comes back to religion.
As often said: writing is thinking (or it can be); and here you can sense AP thinking as he writes; and share his excitement at the insights as they emerge from the exploration.
I've been sampling Irish Papist on-and-off for several years - long enough to have decided he is a Good Bloke; and from this assumption I find that he produces a stimulating post every so often, that seems to set off associations and notions in myself.
And this perhaps is what good blogging is about; and why regular readers come to care - at least somewhat - about our favourite bloggers; and miss them when they are gone.
17 comments:
I had my first blog around 2003, I think. I was fourteen. since then I've had several over the years. your post more or less describes my experience and feel for blogging, and how I always approached it. that may have more to do with experiencing how that 'world' worked before there was money and fame involved, than with age.
the recommended text is also great. I connected especially to this:
"That everything gets worse (or at least, less interesting) was, to me,...well, I was going to write "an article of faith", but it wasn't even an article of faith, in truth. It was just a fact. I didn't think about this much. It was pre-reflective.
Even today, now that I believe in God and the miraculous and the supernatural, I'm still haunted by this worldview. Or at least, something very similar to it.
The world itself, without the supernatural and the religious, doesn't seem satisfying to me, or ultimately that interesting."
Thank you so much, Bruce. I am honoured by this. And I agree with you that non-professional writers are often better than writers who do not nothing but write. Look at Philip Larkin, for instance.
Blogging itself seems to be very much in decline as people move to audio-visual platforms!
@Laeth - It seems I had a blog from 2006, and used a few for storage of publications and to give access to teaching materials (that's the reason for this blog's strange URL) but I only began blogging in mid 2010 when I was sacked from editing Medical Hypotheses.
I began regularly reading blogs in the middle 2000s for instance the famous Mencius Moldbug, where I read and commented. That's an example where I started out considering the author (Curtis Yarvin, with whom I exchanged e-mails in those early years) to be basically a Good Bloke - but I no longer consider him one of these, and haven't read his stuff for many years. He hovered on the verge of becoming a Christian (RC) for some while, but then his nature changed (as I see it) after he made a decisive choice to join the Establishment; after which he became just a part of the mainstream.
Up to the "economic crisis" of 2008 and my conversion, I read/ commented at A Lot of libertarian and centre right economics blogs (particularly in the US) - but I quite suddenly realized that this was a big fake, and that when there was any crisis or significant social pressure; the authors revealed themselves to be dishonest careerist conformists.
That was part of realizing that we are a demotivated hence cowardly culture; and that "alternative" secular ideas were personally and socially useless in face of evil.
Bruce, I learned about your blog from Edward Feser's blog. Who is most definitely a Good Bloke!
it was around 07-08 when I started to get involved with the libertarian movement, through Ron Paul and Austrian Economics, and I had blogged before, but never that intensely (in terms of time spent writing and reading). and there's no denying that there was 'something' there, some kind of energy.
but as you say, it was always going to dissipate one way or another, because it completely ignored the most fundamental aspect of reality.
and the same is true of Moldbug. I thought he had an interesting perspective but by the time I found him all I could see was a gaping hole in his worldview. a supernatural shaped hole. and so after reading a couple of his books, I never gave him a second thought, until I saw he had been initiated into the system. It wasn't that surprising.
@Maolsheachlann - You're welcome. Thank you for your blogging.
Yes, blogging is in decline, and will probably be a temporary form of literature.
But that does not invalidate it! After all, there are plenty of artistic forms that throve for a while are all but "dead" - classical music, for instance; where there hasn't been a solidly first rate great composer (by the standards of the past) since Richard Strauss. Most people cannot really appreciate classical music until the baroque era (Vivaldi, Bach, Handel) which meant it lasted only a couple of hundred years.
Another example is English alliterative poetry, which thrived for many centuries from Anglos Saxons through to Gawain-poet and Langland; but largely had died out by 1400 (replaced at first by rhyming poetry, and then also blank pentameter verse).
Blogging will probably only last about one generation/ three decades; but insofar as it led to valid and good work that some people have (spiritually) learned from, then that 's fine.
I came across your blog via another, I think Frank Wilson's Booksinq, but often just bookmarked it as something to check out later. Finally, I had several of your posts bookmarked but had never actually read enough to decide if I liked your blog or not, so one day I decided to sit down and read at least a few posts so I could finally delete all those bookmarked posts and then either bookmark the blog homepage, or ignore it from then on. Your newest post was about the Durham Ramblers. I had a curious out-of-time/space experience, as I not merely studied English Lit at Durham but had met all of the Ramblers, David F had interviewed me and was later one of my tutors, and I was then friends with David C. So reading your post, having had no idea of your Durham connection, I felt utterly bewildered and as it were in a vortex of strange meaning. So anyway I decided this was A Sign and continued to read your blog every day.
I share your sadness, Bruce. I hoped you might comment on Z-Man's passing.
Funny enough, I first discovered you through your engagement with Z-Man on his blog. Finding you and the other Romantic Christians was providential. I was a convert to Catholicism tending toward Orthodoxy. I was in the midst of completing an MA in philosophy from a conservative Catholic school in the U.S. The marriage of Greek philosophy and Christianity never sat well with me. Your work has helped me to see how I could reject the stultifying assumptions of the former and remain a Christian.
You and Z are/were bloggers of a similar quality: Your writings are personable, your unique specialized language clarifies rather than obfuscates, etc. In the past year or so, I watched with appreciation (and amusement) as you tried in vain to get him and his commentariat to see that they were misusing the word "religion" to describe Leftism. Despite never overtly rejecting materialism, I felt he tended in that direction. In describing the evil of our adversaries, he betrayed a growing recognition of its Sorathic nature.
Indeed, he was a good bloke, an everyman. His description and analysis of the current state of the world from that perspective was worth its weight in gold. For me, he was Virgil to your Beatrice.
"a blogger like ZMan kept me reading partly because he had many insights that seemed personal rather than (as with mainstream journalism) merely parroted"
That is a key point. Even though currently unacknowledged, personal insights, simply an individual's thinking, have been a significant aspect of reading and conversation. Not just as an add on, but in many situations, as a core aspect of it.
A lot of this used to go on in person, though also by letters, or by reading physical publications. It's not about hearing from the "best and brightest", or the most sophisticated, just someone who has a genuine thought to share.
"there need not be any very complete "agreement." For instance, several of my long-term favourite bloggers long-term have been orthodox and traditional Roman Catholics"
I run what I call an "ideas blog." Consequently, I often interact with and cite Roman Catholics because of their ideas, not whether I am in complete agreement. I find no tension in this. In fact, to do otherwise is the genetic fallacy.
"I have come to believe that professional writers very seldom generate first rate work"
I too prefer non-anonymous, non-commercial writers.
@FJ - Thanks for that. I think we regarded Z in a similar way. At times I would lose patience with what I saw as his obtuseness; but then remembered I have often been just as stubborn in my inconsistencies.
"I watched with appreciation (and amusement) as you tried in vain to get him and his commentariat to see that they were misusing the word "religion" to describe Leftism. "
I'm pleased that somebody noticed!
I regard this as a potentially very harmful - also common - error (and I do regard it as an error, not a valid alternative interpretation); and an error also made by Christians (including those I like) as well as (more often) anti-Christians.
@DD - A remarkable synchronicity!
@NLR - Perhaps it is an aspect of living in a world where untruthfulness is endemic and pervasive in public discourse - just to encounter someone who is grapping with reality to the best of their ability is often refreshing.
@Derek - "non-anonymous, non-commercial writers"
My observation is that people who make money from their writing, and come to depend on that money (to any degree), will have their writing corrupted by this interaction - even when the sums involved are small.
I often feel that I detect pandering - or usage of the blog as a form of advertising; when media are monetized.
(An example of this would be Paul Kingsnorth: who I regard as primarily a professional writer, with Christianity as his current subject. IMO Vox Day - at one time among the best of bloggers - has also gone along this path in the past couple of years; and the quality and interest of his blogging has declined commensurately - as well as his discernment. This is also a by-product of "activism".)
Z Man was about the only pseudonymous and monetized blog I still read - and I kept reading because (as commented above) I felt that the author was in a transitional phase, moving towards something better; and it was this that kept him interesting.
There would certainly come a fork in the road where a decision needed to be made (religious versus secular, personal versus pseudonymous etc.) At that point ZMan would have needed to make the right choice of path... at least, if he was to continue being interesting to me.
But it's not just money either. Even though my blog has a very small audience, I have to constantly ensure that I am not motivated by engagement. I have to be willing to lose each and every reader if the alternative is to pander—compromise my principles—for clicks and readership.
@DR - I have very many faults, but pandering has never been one of my problems - quite the reverse!... https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2013/07/on-being-irritable.html
I always loved "Lagos by the Ptomac"
Didn't agree with him all the time but he was good.
RIP Z Man.
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