Sure, Mick, "You call yourself a Christian; I call you a hypocrite" COULD be made to rhyme with "Shut the door, you silly twit," but you’d really have to WORK at it, and I’m afraid the strain would show.
I’m just not sensing another "Honky-Tonk Women" here. You and Keith put your heads together (if Keith can find his) and get back to me…
This is blogging. This is the true blogging, el blogando verdadero, con afición, the kind a man wants if he is a man. The kind that Jake and Lady Brett might have done, if they’d had wi-fi hotspots in the Montparnasse.
What brings this on is that I am writing standing up, Hemingway-style, at the counter in a cafe. But there is nothing romantic about this, which the old man would appreciate. Sort of. This isn’t his kind of cafe. It’s not a cafe he could ever have dreamed of. It’s a Starbucks in the middle of a Barnes and Noble (sorry, Rhett, but I’m out of town today, and there’s no Happy Bookseller here). About the one good and true thing that can be said in favor of being in this place at this time is that there is basically no chance of running into Gertrude Stein here. Or Alice, either.
I’m standing because there are no electrical outlets near the tables, just here at the counter. And trying to sit on one of these high stools and type kills my shoulders. No, it’s not my wound from the Great War, just middle age.
So that puts me in mind of Papa. No, excuse me: I once had lunch with Mary Welsh Hemingway (wife number four) at a hotel down by the river (the Mississippi, not the Seine). It was 1976. She drank a Bloody Mary; I had one of those crisp, cold Dutch beers in the green bottle. It was good, and it did not mount to the head as those things sometimes do. We were standing in line at the buffet when I started to ask her something about "your husband," and I stopped myself to say, "It seems silly to keep saying ‘your husband’ as though he had no name. Is it, uh, is it OK if I just call him ‘Papa‘?"
No, she said. That was just for family.
Good for her.
Anyway, this line of thought got started partly because of the writing-standing-up thing, and partly because I’m standing under that mural they have around the cafe area in Barnes & Nobles, with all the famous writers sitting in a real cafe looking intellectual and bohemian, and Hemingway is up there with Joyce and Faulkner and Neruda and …
Well actually, no, he isn’t. I’ve stepped away and walked around the area three times now, probably drawing stares at such odd, peripatetic behavior, and he’s not up there. But he is on the one on Harbison, isn’t he? I remember it because it bugged me that they showed him smoking a pipe. At least, I think they did. I’m not in a position to check. Anyway, I’ve never seen a photograph of Hemingway smoking a pipe. Not the kind of thing he would do. I’ve got a certain stereotype of pipe smokers in my head, and he doesn’t fit it. Of course, I could be wrong about him.
I shouldn’t let it bother me, but it does. I’m going to walk around again to see for sure if he’s up there…
Nope.
You know, the coffee here is a lot stronger than I expected. She warned me that it was really hot and really full (too full for me to stir in my six packets of Sugar in the Raw without spilling), but she didn’t say it was this strong. It’s enough to make a man start babbling about nothing. Nada y nada y pues nada.
We are all a lost generation.
Who said that? Oh, no — she is here…
I received two very kind — and very incisive — comments on my last post, from Mike Cakora and Barbara Leonard. " Brad, how lucky can a journalist be? You’ve got the best of all the worlds," wrote Barbara. And Mike’s two cents worth was like unto it: After making an observation regarding my regular columns, he added that "Now with the blog you can provide relevant links."
Yes, Barbara, I do have a wonderful job; I’ve known that for a long time. I get paid to lead a team of talented people, and they and I get paid to tell the world what we and I think — about anything and everything. Sure, there are boring bits — such as reading proofs containing copy I’ve already read, often more than once. And there are things that would turn a lot of people away from this work — such as the constant criticism. If it really bugs you to have people call you a fathead, then this is not for you.
But if you love ideas, and you like to jump from one to another like a kid making himself sick in a candy store, there’s no better job.
And as Barbara implies and Mike more specifically explains, blogging takes it to another level. It’s not necessarily a higher level — this kind of journalism is even more hurried than the other, and thoughtful reflection and deliberation are important elements in formulating and expressing the most worthwhile opinions — but it’s certainly a very interesting level. The feedback — including the stuff about me being a fathead — comes quickly, and is aired in public, rather than in private e-mail. (I prefer that, because such exchanges add to the marketplace of ideas in a way that e-mail can’t. It makes the time spent typing more worthwhile.)
But Mike put his finger on one of the very coolest things about blogging — it’s like writing a column, except that, through the magic of hypertext linking, you can do more. Of course, it helps you save a lot of trouble explaining points that are not central to your argument, by directing the reader to further information on that point and then proceeding with your exposition. But better — oh, so much better than that — you get to take the reader along with you on the kinds of seemingly pointless mental digressions that have always made me one of the slowest researchers and writers in the Fourth Estate. Dictionaries are deadly to my efforts to manage my time, because in looking up one word, I run across five others that fascinate me, and some of those definitions lead to others, and I’m off … as in, off course. (Ironically, online dictionaries provide a way to bypass this problem by giving you a way to search rather than to browse. But if you try this one, you can get lost all day.)
The wonderful thing about blogging is that this sort of undisciplined woolgathering is not only not frowned upon, it’s expected. People actually appreciate it. You can’t beat that, with a stick or any other implement of destruction.
I just hope it doesn’t ruin me for regular work. I’m already finding myself getting frustrated because I can’t insert links into my regular print columns so easily (in print, parenthetical URLs can really mess with the flow of what you’re trying to say, and they’re more laborious for your poor reader to use).
But so far, I’m enjoying being able to do both. And if you’ll excuse me for joining Barbara in her Panglossian enthusiasm, this is the best of all virtual worlds.