Borges: Blogger

It’s going better now; several hours of successful work last night, the end is in sight.

Some blogs keep returning to the subject of blogging as though they need to justify it: I have certainly spent time trying to get it exactly right, but justifying it seems unnecessary – why should any kind of writing, communicating, articulating, artistry, artisanship, need justifying?

In the interstices of working and not-working, I pick up the Borges Selected Non-Fictions. Borges was clearly a blogger – brief, fascinating pieces on a variety of topics, each of which defines a world. (It’s actually amazing that his substantial reputation is based, on the most part, on such short pieces of writing.) There is a 1934 piece, ‘I, A Jew’, where he responds to a Fascist news sheet that claimed that he was Jewish – he says he wishes he was; the piece is brief, poetic, speculative, fun, and would make an ideal blog entry.

Hesse wrote critically against ‘feuilletonistes’, against the tendency for newspapers to fragment into little bits of prose; but I think he was wrong or, at least, as Adorno was about popular culture, ultimately unfair. Feuilletons have their own place in writing, and certainly in newspapers. Brief, personalized fragments of writing are valuable. Speculative tours-de-force are wonderful.

Blogging is good….