My standards are so low. I don’t feel like I am . . . protecting writing from amateurs or dabblers or those who are simply no good. My students have expressed a profound interest in writing. I let them write what they want to write.—Michael Martone, linked below
Marissa, who blogs at Paucis Verbis, has named Narrative [this blog’s first name] one of her top five favorite blogs of 2012 (already!). I am pleased and grateful to her for this notice and for her kind words.
She also quotes liberally from my About page, performing another service: rubbing my nose in my known reality that it’s way past time to overhaul that mess (the blog’s most-hit feature). But this July will be Narrative’s fourth anniversary, and that counts for something—isn’t that like 100 years in internet time?
I started Narrative when I was two years into writing a memoir, and I’m still working at both. I’ve learned a lot about each realm, unsurprisingly, in retrospect, since I wasn’t yet reading blogs back then and hadn’t read nearly enough memoirs. I’ve since been pleased and humbled to read other bloggers and memoirists.
My memoir was solely what counted as “writing” then. And it still does, in the sense that books of any kind still signify and justify time spent unlike articles or stories or essays or posts. Unless you can collect the pieces into books. But I’ve come round to viewing blogging as writing, and, as is obvious, as a genre unto itself. Anyway, there’s a dignity to anything competently done that’s continued and that evolves. This is my 252 post, according to WordPress, which also tells me that Narrative has had 87,513 visits.
Blogs are new jugs for old liquids. Plastic jugs, maybe. But I was grateful for my plastic iced tea jug when I dropped it the other day and it bounced. It’s now in the recycle bin, because it leaks, but that beats having gotten a sharp shard in the foot. (As George Carlin used to ask, What if the reason we were put on earth was to discover and make plastic?)
Michael Martone touches on such matters, on art high and low, on counting any writing as writing, in Bill Roorbach’s recent interview with him on Bill and Dave’s Cocktail Hour. Martone is an arts-for-arts-sake guy, in other words he’s artsy as hell, but he’s also a Hoosier, which evens his keel and suffuses with sweetness his utterances:
The writer because of the changing nature of the means of production the way books and magazines are made finds him or herself involved in what we used to think was the designer’s job, the publisher’s job, the editor’s job. . . . “Writing” a postcard is an act of publishing. And I love being involved in not only the abstract writing of the message but the concrete manipulation of the material. The stamps. The writing instruments. And the post office contributes the cancellation, the bar codes of routing. There is so much to read–other than one’s own writing– on the card. So many texts. In museum school there is an argument between those curators that want to deploy labels with artifacts and those that don’t. I like a third way of thinking about it. The labels themselves are artifacts that can themselves be labeled, even expanded. . . .
I teach writing in a generative way now but in an institution that is rigorously curatorial. I have been fortunate at Alabama to be able to clear a space for the students to do lots of things and not worry so much about being professionalized. Try things. Discover self and art. It is a gift I can give. None of the students here pay for the schooling. I don’t make any promises as to what they will do or become. I just say come here and write with me. Let’s find out what writing is for you. Let’s make something up. My standards are so low. I don’t feel like I am a police teacher protecting writing from amateurs or dabblers or those who are simply no good. My students have expressed a profound interest in writing. I let them write what they want to write. I guess I am a flakey artist. I have embraced that. I am far more interested in quantity of writing than in quality. Not at all interested in critical thinking–there are plenty of teachers around here for that. I tell my dean when he inquires after my goals for writing that successful outcome would be in twenty years my student will still be writing. How can we assess that he asks. I tell him in twenty years we will have to ask.
A thoughtful and interesting post. I applaud your energy and persistence in maintaining a blog that repeatedly delivers with both soul and substance.
Congrats Richard–deserved!
Richard, I join Marissa in applauding you. Your blog is consistently rich, valuable and a delight to read as you share yourself, your resources and your wisdom with us. I’m blown away that you’ve done 252 posts! That’s so amazing…you’ve covered so much ground. We should have a Richard Gilbert Day in July when you reach your 4th anniversary! Your blog is something special to celebrate — now and in July. Best, Paulette
Richard, I just belatedly checked out your Top 5 recommendation. It looked like a #2 to me. Very much deserved. Congratulations.
Richard, your blog, as you know, is one of my very favorites. So I rejoice with every honor and wish you many more. Paulette says it well above. Bravo!
Congratulations, Richard. Well deserved.
Dear Richard, I always feel as if I have received a gift when I look in my e-mail and see that I have a new post of yours to read, and I always feel extra lucky when you have something to say about what I’ve done on my blog. Congratulations for being honored, and keep up the (I won’t say “good” but “great”) work! Somehow, it always feels more like writing love coming from you, and not like work at all!