Anyone interested in this Iceland post will want to go over to Ars Notoria … http://arsnotoria.blogspot.com/2009/10/is-blogging-together-being-like-iceland.html … where I’ve added some mildly provocative new paragraphs.

Dan’s post is up on Ars

http://arsnotoria.blogspot.com/

When that newspaper asked readers to suggest improvements of Cif, haughty and mute contributors were nearly at the top of the complaints list.

… Asking me to discuss Christmas when I am talking about something else won’t work — : ) … sorry … you must simply post a delightful Christmas entry on your own blog. That — for me — is the greatest joy of this medium. We write about what most moves and excites _us_, and take our chances on finding an audience and kindred spirits.

If I do nothing else with this blog in the future it will be to continue to criticise the place where we met — when necessary. . .That’s not least because the criticism — and certainly not just by me — has been changing things in the right direction, over there. Ye olde books blog has radically altered its tone from the days of promoting what a friend of mine calls writer-whores, as in ‘Selling Yourself As a Writer‘. . . This is a part of one post I am most pleased to have been able to make in my brief life as a blogger — and probably the most important point made here, amid a lot of larking about:

… I came across this sentence in a riveting collection of essays, My Unwritten Books, by our most brilliant living literary scholar, George Steiner:

‘The censorship which profit imposes on the media is as destructive, perhaps more so than that of political despotism.’

That’s near the end of a passage that reads in part,

‘The coercion which the police state exercises on thought and art is indeed appalling. Yet the damage done may, in the final analysis, be no greater than that caused by the absolutism of the mass market.’

Apparently replying indirectly to bloggers’ criticisms, the Guardian published two additional articles referring to Margaret Drabble’s complaint.

But each of these trivialised it to the point of insult. For instance, Aida Edemariam’s asked readers to compete in a silly contest to redesign the covers of well-known novels

http://acacciatura.wordpress.com/2008/11/16/the-guardians-books-blog-they-do-prate-of-freedom-but/

… but there’s been progress since then …

When are you going to post a travelogue on Ars?

Excuse my belligerence. My objective is to get people to post below the line and engage, though my methods may be questionable.

Sorry, @ISA, @Susan, … cannot answer posts at present. Camels have been kicking each other … also spitting like the llamas they were watching on the telly last week … no use my saying, ‘But I bought camels, not copycats’ … and a steamer trunk containing a whole year of those printed blogs entertaining the Jenkins ghost-of-Gutenberg has burst. … No rest for the wicked, as my granny used to say …

Phil, I can’t help thinking that your lines sound a little mean-spirited & judgemental. It feels like you’ve got a philosopy of thought and everyone must adhere to the same route that you follow as to what makes blogging successful and the blogger, respected, admired, held as credible, or welcomed.

But you do disregard here, an individual’s life which could take a 360 degree turn to yours. Some may have just time to blog and to do nothing else…a person can get that busy, I have experienced the same. And it’s a busyness that commands physical movement where when one finally gets a chance to sit down, all an individual may find time to do is to write other things down by way of priority, rather than to engage in chat. That’s because time is tough and short for some.

Years ago, when I had more time on my hands, I could visit scores of commentors and scores of commentors would return to engage with me. That sort of thing is always easy to maintain. You visit and someone visits back.

But sometimes things happen and out of guilt at not being able to reply to comments, a blogger will say goodbye and suddenly shut down a blog. At the moment, I wonder how I can still write a post and am grateful to anyone who still reads me when it’s obvious that my thoughts are just a record of personal happenings. Does that mean that I shouldn’t blog or have no right to blog?

Isn’t this some kind of self-righteous censorship as well?
When you define what a blogger should do and shouldn’t…which incidentally falls down to the notion of what a blogger can write and should not.

After all, if a blogger uses a blog as a diary approach for introspection…happy to be read but not as free to be held in voluble discussions, does that mean you would despise the person?

That’s censorship formed by a less than broadened mind. And I in reality, fall in that category you despise, Phil…not by choice but by default from a lifetyle that demands engagement in other purposes, rather than always an online banter or friendly argument etc…

The reasons I haven’t posted earlier were for a lack of time and I think personally, I’m just waiting for a subject I would enjoy writing on that doesn’t involve the Guardian and censorship. Can we talk about Christmas for a change?

I mentioned your post to Phil in the way of passing since Des appears to have lost his mail and hasn’t yet been able to confirm his link for Phil’s blog. Des needs another invite. But if I wait for Des to write to Phil, he’ll also be in the middle of one lengthy post or the other and he’ll say, later, later…, it will just not happen. That’s why I wrote to Phil last night.

I was also concerned about the connections you mentioned between Phil & the Gulag but probably in a far more amusing & milder fashion.

cheers

… I’m not going to reply yet but will give readers a chance to digest all your angles … a bit like letting a roast ‘rest’ for twenty minutes after you take it out of the oven. Hope that’s okay.