Bloggen lijkt Ursula K. Le Guin niks, tot ze Saramago leest die op zijn 85e een blog begon, in het Engels gepubliceerd als boek, The Notebook.
I never wanted to blog before. I’ve never liked the word blog — I suppose it is meant to stand for bio-log or something like that, but it sounds like a sodden tree-trunk in a bog, or maybe an obstruction in the nasal passage (oh, she talks that way because she has such terrible blogs in her nose). I was also put off by the idea that a blog ought to be ‘interactive,’ that the blogger is expected to read people’s comments in order to reply to them and carry on a limitless conversation with strangers. I am much too introverted to want to do that at all. I am happy with strangers only if I can write a story or a poem and hide from them behind it, letting it speak for me.
So, though I have contributed a few blog-like objects to Book View Café, I never enjoyed them. After all, despite the new name, they were just opinion pieces or essays, and writing essays has always been tough work for me and only occasionally rewarding.
But seeing what Saramago did with the form was a revelation.
Oh! I get it! I see! Can I try too?
My trials/attempts/efforts (that’s what ‘essays’ means) so far have very much less political and moral weight than Saramago’s and are more trivially personal. Maybe that will change as I practice the form, maybe not. Maybe I’ll soon find it isn’t for me after all, and stop. That’s to be seen. What I like at the moment is the sense of freedom.
Saramago didn’t interact directly with his readers (except once.) That freedom, also, I’m borrowing from him. – UKL, A Note at the Beginning
Het eerste bericht van Ursula K. Le Guin verschijnt op 19 oktober 2010. Vijf jaar later blogt Ursula K. Le Guin foto’s en filmpjes van haar kat onder de kerstboom en op de wasbak, en over Elena Ferrante. Ik ben begonnen bij het begin en het is zo goed dat ik alles om me heen vergeet en laat vallen, ook slaap, en internet omarm alsof morgen niet bestaat. Tweede bericht (essay) gaat over vrije tijd, derde over Google, vierde over Zadie Smith. Er zijn er 110.