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April 14, 2010
In his review of Miscellaneous Voices: Australian Blog Writing No. 1, edited by Karen Andrews, (Miscellaneous Press ) Geordie Williamson, the literary critic of The Australian asks some good questions. He says:
While our conversations have largely concentrated on how blogs affect politics, business and the media -- how they dehumanise us, invade our privacy or offer our best chance for true mass democracy -- what has been missed is a discussion of their style. Has the internet changed the way we write? If so, then how? And if these changes can be isolated, have they been for the best?
The anthology of Australian blog writing refers to blog writing by those in the literary institution and Williamson links back to Robert Darntons' pre-blogging pamphleters of the Old Regime and in the politics of the French revolution in the New York Review of Books blog. He answers his questions thus:
Whether our political, business and entertainment elites have the same thing to fear from bloggers remains to be seen; but it is obvious that this particular style, entertaining to the point of scurrilousness, has become the default mode for internet writing. Taken with the failure of poetry and fiction to create a vigorous online presence, it suggests the web is reshaping the way we write.
He comes to this judgement by comparing blogs to print and vice-versa. Andrews says on the Splog, the blog of SPUNC, the home of Australia's small press and independent publishing, that her anthology addresses the common complaint that there is nothing worthwhile to read online and that the selected voices and stories contained within it were worthy of reaching a potentially different audience than what they might receive online.
But it is not just writing since Andrews links to the blogs of Heather Armstrong, Ree Drummond and Scott Schuman to highlight the difficulties in crossing the line from amateur to professional and making a little side money from writing.
What stood out for me was not the style of online writing by the author bloggers. It was that all the above make extensive use of photography.Andrew's own blog--Miscellaneous Mum makes extensive use of photography. Even Sophie Cunningham, who addresses the writing in her Blogging – Where Are We Now? post at Spike--- Meanjin's blog makes extensive use of photographs on her own blog.
Photography is not writing, nor is it simply an illustration of writing. It is a part of our visual culture not our literary culture. Yet no mention is made of the mix of medium's or how photography relates to writing by Andrews or Cunningham. The use of photography in their writing is marked by silence. Isn't the extensive use of photography one way that blog writing is different from the printed literary form?
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