Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Alan Sondheim queried Poetics list about whether anyone is reading his work. well, he knows some do, for whenever a brouhaha developes, thrice yearly like clockwork, concerning his steady posting habits, he always gets plenty of defenders. okay, I am assuming he asks this sincerely in the sense of not being a voice or avatar. one person asked simply, why worry it. writers may get a glimmer of what readers get from their work, but response aint really a given. and why should the reader's reaction matter? I could credit Alan with with bringing in a nervous voice to his proceedings. I believe he is needy, however. I message ruled him because I don't want to feel guilty for not reading him thoroughly. taking a break from Sondheim. I have read plenty of his work.
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3 comments:
I figured you would do this if you haven't already, especially after the problems I had with Potes and Poets.
Someone read this, sent it on to me.
I'm hardly needy, btw.
- Alan, sondheim@panix.com
I didn't mean my comment as a snipe. I HAVE lately been overwhelmed by Sondheim posts, I'm getting pretty tired of listservs in general and their closed systems. I haven't and wouldn't say stop posting. I have read, as I said, a great deal of Sondheim work, and have praised it publicly. Sondheim regularly receives public praise (versus the idiotic way people decry his work) so the query about whether anyone is interested sounds disengenuous and needy. why worry it? and why worry that a little under-financed press couldn't republish your work? we're all martyrs if we need to be.
I agree with you here. It's odd, because I find blogs closed - they're like enclaves. So it's one way or another; there's no ideal software or system. On an email list you can be directly contradicted, which is a problem (as on Poetics), but also an opportunity - it's similar to face-to-face contact. On a blog you have control of presence and it's on your territory of course.
Perhaps I'm still nostalgic for the earlier period of the Net when there was a lot more community - Usenet for example, before the spam, not to mention the MOOs MUDs, MUSHs, ytalk, talk, ntalk, IRC, etc. It's almost as if one participated continuously in a conversation. Now it's quite different - it seems more corporate, more controlled, and contaminated everywhere by spam. I think btw one reason Google has been so successful is that it's resisted a lot in these directions...
- Alan, and thanks for your reply
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