Aasof’s Reflections

When I first began blogging on My Telegraph there seemed to be a continual cry of, OH NO! Not another blog on blogging!  My search for a ‘decent’ site had led me there and having lurked off stage – so to speak – I decided to blog there, beginning with non-controversial blogs. I thought the site often treated newcomers in a very unfriendly manner, certainly not in any way that could be termed ‘an honest critique’ of their blog content or its presentation.

Some five or more years later, the world has moved on. Amateur bloggers like myself who now know how the professional media have commandeered the internet – if they’re wise – have given up any delusions of grandeur that they may have held, or are captives of that media. Still, blogging does give voice to the ‘common man’ (I’m sure you ladies know my intent) and both the professional media and amateur bloggers are learning to use ‘blogs’ effectively. So! Cue Aaron Copland and Fanfare for the Common Man (article).

This particular blog was prompted by the following FCPA article with the title The blogging life, circa 1925-1976

The late E.B. White wrote for the New Yorker magazine and is credited with creating a new literary form — mainly short items that were light in tone and serious in substance. White’s 90-year-old “new form” sounds a lot like today’s blogging (if everything goes well). The word “blogger” didn’t appear until the 1990s. But in pre-digital 1969, White described in an interview with the Paris Review how he approached his work for the New Yorker. He sounded a lot like a . . . . blogger.

White said, “The things I have managed to write have been varied and spotty — a mishmash. Except for certain routine chores, I never knew in the morning how the day was going to develop. 

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.” “Strunk & White,”(pdf)

George Plimpton and Frank H. Crowther’s full interview of E.B. White in the Fall 1969 issue of the Paris Review is here.

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Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. He can be contacted here.