So I’m reading the blog of the Great Author, whose
writing workshop I attended last winter (at a time and place that shall remain
unidentified, lest my anonymity be compromised – it was a very small class).
Turns out he’s had some trouble publishing his most recent novel, in spite of
having dozens already in print (and being a good writer, unlike many a popular
author), and has been instructed by the new publisher to keep a regular blog.
I don’t really get the rationale behind the idea
that writers should have blogs. Well, I do understand it; the idea is that the
blog is a platform to garner followers, so that publishers will be enticed to
publish the blogger’s novels as they already have a built-in readership.
This
seems wrong-headed to me, however. Novels are vastly different than blogs, and
I don’t know that I would get to know very much about the novelist’s works by
reading his/her blog, beyond I guess a certain feel for that person’s general
sensibilities – the GA, for example, has a wry and sardonic tone quite often,
and is yet playful with that as well, and so is attractive, writingwise.
In fact (ahem), though I generally dislike and
avoid most blogs, I was inspired to post a comment on one of his entries. The
entry was a brief tour de force, a faux-scholarly discourse on the topic of
halvah (!) written in the style of a Wikipedia entry. I responded in kind,
contributing an alleged further comment on the subject purportedly from a
reference to that same article, which of course doesn’t exist in any case
(haha!).
Let me
just say now that the GA did not post a further comment. I first thought this
was because he has never posted a comment on the various comments that have
appeared after some of his entries, and that was just the way it was.
Sadly, that is not the case – I noticed just the
other day that he had posted a comment in response to a person who had
discussed some of his earlier works (the original blog item was on the GA’s
first 15 or so books). So yes, the GA does read the comments and simply chose
to make none on my entry. I imagine the great man sitting at his keyboard,
eyeing the thing with feline indifference before beginning on his next post,
the content having vanished from his mental awareness in the blink of an eye.
That observation has forced me to reconsider the frequency of my visits
to this site, which frankly were bordering on the obsessive. I now limit myself
to checking for new entries once every few days. I’m afraid I can’t help myself
from looking at the end of the halvah piece to see if anyone at all has posted
anything further, but as the days pass, the topic moves further down on the
Previous Posts list, and will soon drop off entirely.
No matter; it’s still out there. It counts.
