Black Inc’s annual collection Best Australian Essays is out again. This year Drusilla Modjeska has replaced Robert Dessaix as editor but if Delia Falconer’s review in The Age is any guide, it’s still the same old same old:
Over its lifetime, this anthology has always had a small population of writers to call upon. Unlike the The Best American Essays, on which it is modelled – drawing literary essays from high-end journals such as The Atlantic Monthly – our own version, by necessity, has always been more democratic in its definition of “essay�.
A little more democracy in its definition of “essayist� might be more useful – a point made by Kim in this recently bumped post. It’s not as if the editor of Best Australian Essays need sully her browser cache by visiting blogs either – several blogs of national significance are archived at the Australian National Library as part of the Pandora project. A good place to start, I think, if you’re looking for essays and essayists who have successfully evaded more traditional forms of publication.
It’s probably too late in the year to organise publication of a stocking stuffer in book form – that will have to wait for the 2007 Santa bothering season. We’ll just have to settle for an open thread where you can post links to blog posts or series that you would want to see included in an anthology of The Best Australian On-Line Butter of 2006. I won’t nominate anything I’ve written, as long as you don’t nominate anything of yours.
Hat tip to Nicholas Gruen of Club Troppo, for the inspiration.
Dive Tiley’s post on his illness and hospitalisation was the absolute best this year.
Ampersand Duck’s recent pieces here and here have been worth writing home about. As was Pavlov Cat’s response.
What I’ve thought might also go in book form is a selection of some of the great threads – lightly edited for repetition, drunkeness and stupidity.
A publication or anthology of blog-output without the comments would not be the total representation of blogs. Sure there are posts that are the equal of the best mag writing, but the bread and butter of blogs is the conversation. It’s the hammering out, the cut and thrust, the communal embroidery of an idea that makes blogs fecund. Long interchanges with numerous voices could give a feel for the times and context surrounding an issue. The competing views. What was contested, what was deemed off limits and what was merely laughable.
The essay is the lone wolf. I think the numerous mags and newspapers already covers that pretty much. (Not to say that the main point here isn’t valid.)
But blogs have created a new genre.
What WBB said, and I would add that if the bread and butter is the cut and thrust, then the Vegemite is the images (still and moving), sound files and other links. It is indeed a new genre, and a quite different one, for all those reasons. I like blogging mainly because I can do things with it that it’s not possible to do on an ordinary page — including get almost instant readers and feedback.
All kinds of factors go into putting anthologies together. Don’t hold Drusilla completely responsible for the contents, as she may not have had the final say.
wbb: “but the bread and butter of blogs is the conversation… the communal embroidery of an idea… Long interchanges with numerous voices could give a feel for the times…”
Yep, that pretty much nails it.
Dr. Cat: “It is indeed a new genre, and a quite different one, for all those reasons…”
Well, very strictly speaking, it’s not a *new* genre, as anyone who’s ever worked in an institution with a Common Book can tell you… even the serial graffiti on Roman bath-house walls is something of a precedent… but the combination of genre with improved and lightning-quick technology is indeed something new on the face of the earth, that’s fer sure.
“the Vegemite is the images (still and moving), sound files and other links… I like blogging mainly because I can do things with it that it’s not possible to do on an ordinary page — including get almost instant readers and feedback.”
I remember talking to a prominent computer theorist a long pre-internet time ago, and he said that something they were always thinking about was, how can you get to a point where instead of using a computer as a glorified calculator-slash-typewriter, you can *play* it like a musical instrument. Maybe this is sort of what he had in mind (links as chords?). Or at least, the start of it. Where it’ll all end, well…
Posts I’ve really valued this year have often not been things that would translate to any other medium. I have vague ideas of writing an anthology post at my own blog sometime in the next little while so I won’t pre-empt myself any further here.
I will say though that outside the chronicling hypertextual context-rich environment, blog posts tend to lose that magical and rich interconnectedness. This was brought home to me reading the book version of the Riverbend blog – still an incredible document but lacking some things particular to the online version.
And as P.Cat says, the graphical element is an essential part of the whole blog genre. I agree with Phil that David’s post about his hospital experiences was quite amazing and would effortlessly stand up to any Australian essay I’ve read elsewhere this year, but David’s blog is also a very good example of what can be done via the interplay of words and images, and to reprint his post without the accompanying oblique commentary of the image he chose to go with it would definitely be a reduction.
Seems we’re still missing a link to David’s post.
Thanks for that link, Gummo. I had not read that before. I second the nomination. Awesome stuff. Mr Tiley wins all the awards. Again.
My review of The Best Australian Essays 2006.
In the comments thread Ken links to there’s some interesting discussion about an anthology of Oz blog posts.
http://www.clubtroppo.com.au/2006/12/11/the-best-australian-essays-2006-a-review/#comment-69554
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