Marcus' World

2009: The Need for Instant Connection

As the year concludes I'm working on a piece called "Getting Divorced is a Pain in the Ass," which I hope to read aloud in San Francisco late next month.  It still needs a lot of work, but I am pleased to say that the title is extremely accurate.  I've already taken to calling 2009 the "lost year," with hopes and expectations that 2010 and all the years to come will be much better.

One theme of the piece will be of my need for instant personal connections, which has always been with me and never more so than this year.  In middle school my friend Melissa Higby commented on my tendency (which would be more useful if I had an interest in becoming a politician) to say hello to everyone as I walked the halls.  Apparently this had the unintended effect of stopping the flow of traffic! 

When I left NYU in 2007, the libary director told me that I had the "gift" of connecting with all kinds of people throughout the organization, which was a "real treasure."  At UCSF I've tried to be friendly with everyone, and 2.5 years later I feel that I've developed stature within the library both because of and beyond my title. 

All of this is good (and amusing, in the case of my middle school days.)  But in the personal realm, my need for connection--instant, like coffee--can be off-putting.  This year the divorce left me hungering for new connections, but without sufficient skills to let them grow naturally.  This was true for friends and romantic partners alike.  I'd find someone cool, glom onto them obsessively, and in some cases push them away.  Most people--at least most adults--are much more guarded as they are getting to know someone.  I've never been good at this, and this year my barometer of what was appropriate was way off.

But 2010 is a new year, and I know my life will be remarkable going forward.  Lessons learned:

• Date more casually.
• Friend more casually.
• Remember that I have a lot to offer in any kind of relationship, friendship or otherwise.

Instant connections are compelling but fleeting. From here on out I'll have the patience to wait for the real thing.

The Afghanistan Escalation

All month I've been depressed by President Obama's decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.  I  tried to focus on the fact that the President conducted a rigorous policy review, and was willing to listen to skeptics such as Vice President Biden.  But who cares about that?  Escalating the war in Afghanistan remains a mistake.

Garry Wills states it plainly and ferociously:  "We have been in Afghanistan for eight years, earning hatred as occupiers, and after this record for longevity in American wars we will be there for still more years earning even more hatred. It gives us not another Iraq but another Vietnam, with wobbly rulers and an alien culture."   Our Afghan escalation is another in a long string of examples of American hubris, a belief that the rules that apply to other cultures with respect to Afghanistan (such as the old USSR) do not apply to us.  For we are Americans, and we are different.

It is galling to know that we are propping up the corrupt regime of Hamid Karzai, who at one time seemed inspirational but has turned out to be a thug.  American soldiers are losing their lives to support a man who doesn't deserve such deference.

Two weeks ago, I wanted President Obama to refuse his Peace Prize in Oslo.  How can you announce a big troop escalation and then receive a medal for peace?  That was a little much for me to expect, and at least the President used the occasion to make a provocative speech about "just war."   

But ultimately, a thorough policy review and a tough speech are cold comfort.  The decision to escalate the Afghan war is ill-advised, and likely to be haunting.  There's still daylight between President Obama and President Bush, but less than there used to be.

Memoir Class with Stephen Elliott

Yesterday I attended a class about how to write memoir, taught by Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott.  It was an intimate  seminar at the Writer's Grotto, which was a pleasant surprise since I'd been expecting a more formal and impersonal lecture. 

Using the experience of writing his recently published The Adderall Diaries as the focal point, Elliott touched upon critical issues such as the ethics of incorporating other people's experiences into something you write.

Unless you are a complete hermit, any memoir will include depictions of other people.  Elliott argued that there is nothing intrinsically noble or even defensible about doing this.  But if you want to write a memoir the need for "radical honesty" has to trump all else--the reader will know when you are pulling punches.  There is nothing wrong with deciding not to write a story in order to spare feelings, but there is something amiss with a story that's only half told.

This really resonated with me.  On the blog this year I've tried to be honest about my feelings while going through the divorce.  I don't think I achieved radical honesty at all times, and I don't know that anyone ever does.  That makes perfect sense as a goal to strive for, however--otherwise there seems to be no point in writing a memoir.  Many people will never value memoirs, finding them to be exercises in self-aggrandizement.   But it is the type of writing that is most affecting to me as a reader, and what I am most interested in writing myself.

Elliott also noted that he never pitches stories or books, but just writes what he wants.  This also rang true.  In New York I took several classes about breaking into freelance journalism, but they were always about finding the right market niche.  I couldn't imagine slanting my writing in order to sell (to be fair, my ideological purity was funded in full by my steadily paying job as a librarian at the NYU Medical Center).  Elliott is one of the most well-known literary figures in San Francisco, but he shares a one bedroom apartment with two 20 year olds.  There are real sacrifices to a full-time calling as a writer, and--just like you have to decide whether writing a memoir is worth the potential costs--every budding writer has to decide whether these sacrifices are justified. 

Full time writing will not be my calling, because I do want to become a father and would want the steady income that this requires.  This was an important realization, and worth the price of the class.  For years--like a lot of people--I've harbored fantasies  of becoming a full-time writer and setting the literary world on fire. But yesterday I accepted, pretty easily, the fact that the sacrifices involved in doing so are not worth it for me.  At 32 years old I am able to say that a traditional pull of family and community is what matters most in my conception of the person I hope to become.

Even so, that person will write sometimes!  Elliott advised the tried and true "few adjectives, no adverbs"--let the verbs and nouns do the talking.  And he also recommended careful filtering of the feedback people give you on your writing.  Everyone who reads your work is doing you a favor, but everyone has their biases.  In the end you have to be true to yourself, as hard as this can be.

If Publishers Must Evolve, So Too Must Libraries

Prompted by Scott's post about the current OSTP discussion of public access, this morning I came up with a new way of understanding the roiling debates about open access, taxpayer rights, and peer-reviewed literature.

Much of the library activism boils down to demanding that publishers change deeply entrenched business models for the greater good.  This applies whether the publisher is a commercial entity or a scholarly society that uses the proceeds from journal subscriptions to fund other activities.  The Internet is here, and change is a must. And right now too!

But how much have libraries really changed in the Internet age?  Sure--we all have good web sites and manage petabytes of electronic content.  We teach classes about how to use subscription databases and Google more effectively.  And we also keep track of new tools that can enhance productivity, and share this information with users.

So in many ways we have evolved and are evolving.  On the other hand, gate count and volumes owned remain extremely important statistics.  And there is an enduring belief that we should find ways to lure users into our buildings, rather than spending energy on getting the information to them where they live and work. 

This is all natural, and discussions about "library as place" are healthy.  I tend to want to push the envelope, so some more tradition-minded resistance is helpful.  But the fact is that change is hard, and we aren't making strides at any faster rate than the publishers.

I often perform a thought experiment: What would libraries be like if the Internet had come first?  Let's just pretend that the Web has been around for centuries, and at a more recent point in time humans realized the value of organizing and storing the culture's information.   Would we need such grand buildings, given that everything is online?  Probably not.  And would we count every last footfall into our front doors? I hope not.

The UCSF Library, where I work, is an absolutely gorgeous building.  It really is the centerpiece of campus, with million dollar views of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge available on most floors.  Those of us who work there tend to take it for granted after a while, but I'm trying not to.

And yet--as much as I love the building, it's not what I would design today if we were starting from scratch.  We could probably get by with 2 floors rather than 5, as long as we kept the views.  Staff time could be devoted more to managing the University's own intellectual output that never makes it into formal papers (our own internal grey literature), and we wouldn't need as much attention to the published scholarly literature.  Or maybe not--librarians will always be pulled between responding to the needs of patrons as they exist today (the service imperative) and pushing the community to consider new ways of managing their scholarship (the activist imperative.)

This all seems heretical, because library culture is so invested in preserving space.  Even so our second floor will soon become the Teaching and Learning Center for the campus, which I think is great.  But there are some rumblings about "losing space" and dark talk of what's coming next. 

Ultimately, libraries and librarians exist to provide on-target information at the point of need. For millennia this required physical artefacts gathered into a specific location.  This is no longer the case, at least to a large extent.  But our frames of reference have not kept up with technological advances.

This is not meant as an indictment of my colleagues! Change is extremely hard, and I am fortunate to work in a field with so many dedicated and intelligent people.   But the next time you sign an open access petition, take a moment to ask how you are being revolutionary at your own library.   Open access is a revolution, so we need to make major changes too.

Marcus on the Prowl: An Interior Monologue

I currently reside in San Francisco's Mission District, which has one of the highest concentrations of bars in the city.  Since I can't figure out why else I'm living on this over-priced sliver of land, occasionally I'll talk myself into going to one of these bars.  Ostensibly this is to meet someone, or at least to engage in flirtatious bar banter.  But I know going in that odds are high that I will never actually say a word to anyone.  Instead I'll purchase a relatively inexpensive drink, and gulp it down while watching other people talk and wondering what I'm doing in this place anyway. This is also a good time to tend to Facebook duties--thank goodness for the iPhone.

More often than not, I'll wander around the Mission to three or four places.  I'll peek in for 30 seconds or so, deciding that whatever establishment I've walked into is too loud or dark (or both).  Then I'll eventually go home, justifying that at least I got some good exercise.

Last night I actually stayed in a bar for a bit of time, for the first time since May.  And I kept my streak alive of not saying one word to anyone ever. Herewith is an interior monologue in 2 parts.

PART 1: DECIDING TO GO TO A BAR

"The Mission has lots of bars, you know...I should go to one."

"But everyone else will be with someone. If I go alone I'll look like a loser."

"Maybe, but none of my friends live in the Mission--well, John and Cait do, but they're married--and it's not against the law to go alone."

"Yeah, but I can tell you right now that you won't talk to anyone.  What's the point?"

"This time will be different! Let's go!"

"Yeah right."

PART 2: AT THE BAR

"Hmm...everyone seems to be with at least one other person."

"Told you! Let's leave before you waste any money."

"$5 for a Trumer, with tip, isn't so bad."

"Still a waste, but whatever."

"Bartender...Trumer please." ["That'll be $4."]

"OK, now I have my beer. Let's scan the scene more closely."

"Look at that old dude in the corner--he came in alone too. You look as bad as him!"

"Shut up."

"Sorry."

"Those three girls are cute, and one has a cool hat. Shall I approach her to compliment her hat?"

"Jesus Christ, dude...how lame can you get?"

"Good point. And besides, they are already deep in conversation. Why talk to the loner loser?"

"You're actually a great guy, Marcus.  It's just that bars are 'theaters of fakery' and you keep it real."

"Thanks. I liked that line, and Aunt Linda did as well."

"Np. But why are we here again then?"

"Shut up."

"OK."

"Hmm...there are three people--two girls and a guy. I think that the one girl is just a friend and the other two are dating. And the free girl is Asian!"

"Christ."

"Yeah, whatever.  OK, I'm going to head to the bar!"

"Hmm...they seem deeply engrossed, even if the 2 are dating and the one is a friend [and how would you know that anyway?]"

"Good point--and what I would say anyway? I think the person behind me needs a drink."

"OK, time to leave the bar."

"Hmm...there are two girls sitting on one of those couches over there. Time to be Hugh Hefner!"

"Please.  I'll go to the jukebox and survey the scene."

"Damn ...there are already two guys sitting on the chairs next to the couches, talking to them."

"Yes, I see that. But thanks."

"Np. But hark--two women come! Right over to your place near the jukebox."

"Yeah, but I'm about halfway through this beer by now.  And the one girl is kind of fat."

"Dude, that's harsh."

"Just sayin'.  And they are already deep in conversation, as ever."

"OK--but most people are in throngs. They are right here! Easy to speak to!"

"Yes, but I don't want to. Bars are theaters of fakery, and I'm keeping it real."

"Whatever dude...nobody says you have to marry the people you meet in a bar."

"Yeah, but that's what I'm looking for.  Just trying not to be so turbo-fast and scare away whomever I meet."

"Good to hear.  But--honestly--then why are we here?"

"I guess I think I should come since I live in the Mission."

"That's lame."

"I know. Well, one last chance to talk to hat girl.  At least she's near the door so I can make an easy exit."

"Good luck!"

"Hmm...the dudes who were standing nearby have left, but hatgirl remains in deep conversation with her friend."

"Yeah--go talk to the old dude."

"Shut up!!"

"Jk."

"Well, the glass is almost empty and Jeremy sent me an email.  Let's get back to him pronto."

"Good plan."

"You know what I've been doing most of the night?"

"What?

"Planning this blog post."

"Ha ha ha!"

"Beer finished--let's get out of here."

"Let's."

Web-Based Workflow Tools Panel

Today I participated about web-based workflow tools, sponsored by PubGet.  Workflow tools aim to improve the efficiency and productivity of researchers, by making it easier to find, store and re-use the scientific literature. 

Ryan Jones of PubGet moderated the panel, and PubGet developer Ramy Arnaout was on the panelist.  Peter Binfield of the Public Library of Science joined us, and we presented from the PLoS headquarters in San Francisco.  Ansuman Chattopadhyay, Head of the Molecular Biology Information Service at the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Libraries, joined us from Pittsburgh.  So the entire panel comprised the perspective of a tool developer (Ramy), end user (Ansuman), publisher (Pete), and librarian (me).

We experienced some technical difficulties, which I suppose is inevitable in any type of Web-hosted event.  For a while Ansuman's slides didn't advance, and setting all that straight consumed some of our hour.   Unfortunately, this cut into the time when those listening in could have asked questions. Nevertheless, I felt that the panelist's prepared remarks and the answers to our questions provided in advance provided a good overview of workflow tools.

PubGet speeds up the process from article identification to article retrieval, which is a useful service to scientists.  Ramy spoke about the impetus for creating PubGet and offered a brief demo.  I focused my remarks on ways to help scientists make sense of the articles they come across--such as the idea of organizing articles by hierarchical concepts of importance rather than linearly, which is one feature of the "Article of the Future" project.   While the idea of abandoning narrative is hard on my English major's heart, I can see how this could be useful to scientists. 

Ansuman spoke about many 3rd party tools that can enhance the experience of searching PubMed, specifically singling out GoPubMed for praise.  I've made some initial forays into understanding 3rd party search tools, but as Ansuman was speaking I realized that understanding this space would be a great way to provide more targeted outreach to UCSF's research community.  Ansuman pointed to the blogosphere as the way he keeps up with new tools, most especially the work of Hope Leman.

Pete spoke about PLoS's article level metrics initiative, which aids in the evaluation of the impact of individual articles (the impact factor only works at the journal level, and is widely over-used and mis-used throughout academia.)  UCSF and UC Berkeley co-sponsored an extensive talk that Pete gave about this topic last month, and the slides are here.

Despite the early hour (at least on the West Coast) I was excited and energized to be part of this panel.  I hope that it was interesting and informative for all who attended.

The Court Order that Allowed Ulysses into the US

Spurred on by an upcoming MeetUp group meeting in January,  I have decided to finally read James Joyce's difficult masterpiece Ulysses.  That task begins tomorrow.

Tonight I focused on the 1933 Court decision that allowed Ulysses into the US, after being banned for alleged obscenity.  The decision, by the Honorable John M. Woolsey, is a marvel of writing in its own right.  The ruling is included in most copies of Ulysses. 

Woolsey's ultimate reason for allowing the sale of Ulysses is that it was not obscene; he did not utilize pure "free speech" grounds of the kind that are familiar today.  Along the way there is blatant classism and a pretty sophisticated understanding of how to interpret a work of literature.

Some choice quotes--I am using quotation marks around the title to honor the judge's style:

"[O]n account of the length of 'Ulysses' and the difficulty of reading it, a jury trial would have been an extremely unsatisfactory, if not an almost impossible, method of dealing with it."

"'Ulysses' is not an easy book to read or understand...The study of 'Ulysses' is, therefore, a heavy task."

This passage is truly beautiful: "Joyce has attempted--it seems to me, with astonishing success--to show how the screen of consciousness with its ever-shifting kaleidoscopic impressions carries, as it were on a plastic palimpsest, not only what is in the focus of each man's observation of the actual things about him, but also in a penumbral zone residua of past impressions, some recent and some drawn up by association from the domain of the subconscious."

And now, a defense of artistic integrity: "If Joyce did not attempt to be honest in developing the technique which he has adopted in 'Ulysses' the result would be psychologically misleading and thus unfaithful to his chosen technique. Such an attitude would be artistically inexcusable."

Introducing the word "funked":  "It is because Joyce has been loyal to his technique and has not funked its necessary implications..."

Just plain hilarious, albeit with ethnic stereotyping: "In respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of his characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring."  You've gotta love those Irish Junes!

Classism: "If one does not wish to associate with such folk as Joyce describes, that is one's own choice. In order to avoid indirect contact with them one may not wish to read 'Ulysses''; that is quite understandable."  Quite.

And, the clincher: "[M]y considered opinion, after long reflection, is that whilst in many places the effect of 'Ulysses' on the reader is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac. 

    "'Ulysses' may, therefore, be admitted into the United States."

"Ruthlessly Tender": Yet Another Post on David Foster Wallace

One of this blog's minor obsessions has become my fascination with David Foster Wallace.   His suicide last September, sad to say, is what prompted me to really take notice of his work.  Now I am getting to the point where I want to read every single word he ever wrote, and maybe even write the definitive biography.  That last part is a tall order, but there is a precedent for amateur biographers; Bradley P. Dean did yeoman's work so that we could all better appreciate Henry David Thoreau.  

I won't promise that I'll write the definitive biography of Foster Wallace.  But this week--as I blazed through his final collection of essays, Consider the Lobster--I finally figured out why I admire his work so much.  Or maybe I've known this for a while, and this week it finally sunk in. 

Foster Wallace was a deeply sympathetic observer of the foibles of humanity, while simultaneously being a sharp-eyed, no-bullshit observer of same.   This is very hard to do, and it's what made him "ruthlessly tender," in the words of an LA Times review about Consider the Lobster.

Great satirists--think Twain or Bierce, or even Stewart and Colbert--often have a brittle and bitter edge, especially as they age and curdle.  After a while you start to wonder if they actually aren't all that outraged, but are just playing their part in the great big carnival of life.  Foster Wallace was genuinely outraged--about the casual cruelty that characterizes the pornography industry, say, or the fact that a lobster does feel pain as it rattles and shakes on top of the stove.  But he also had compassion and self-doubt, recognizing the vulnerability and loneliness of porn buffs as they meet their favorite starlet; and feeling queasy about the source of his meat (or seafood), but not really wanting to give it up.   He was able to see both sides of a story, and could work up his outrage meter without ever losing faith in and respect for humanity.

A knock on Foster Wallace is that he is too showy, especially with the thoroughly unnecessary use of footnotes (and, often, footnotes to the footnotes.)  Yes, this is not everybody's cup of tea.  But in Lobster I gained a new appreciation for the genius of the footnotes.  Essentially, he is thinking out loud.  He'll start off on a tangent that is logically connected to the main text, challenge his own assumptions as he's writing, and decide to leave all the evidence there on the page.  Most of us edit out or refine our assumptions so that what's left is crisp and clean, but Wallace does not.  This is messier and wordier than we might prefer, of course.  But it is also more brave and honest.

Bravery, and the use of literature to ask and answer real and urgent questions, are (were) a big deal for Foster Wallace.  He had no truck with trendy irony, which uses words only to paint pretty pictures and not to ask about anything that actually matters.  My old and dear friend John W. Evans, currently a poetry fellow at Stanford, offers a similar lament about how we live in an ironic and passionless age.  Why write anything at all, if you're so afraid to get to the sticky marrow where life actually happens?  If I want a pretty picture I can draw a rainbow.  

I think David Foster Wallace agrees with me.  Here he is in "Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky": "Frank's bio [of Dostoevsky] prompts us to ask ourselves why we seem to require of our art an ironic distance from deep convictions or desperate questions, so that contemporary writers have to either make jokes of them or else try to work them in under cover of some formal trick like intertextual quotation or incongruous juxtaposition, sticking the really urgent stuff inside asterisks as part of some multivalent defamiliarization-flourish or some such shit." 

And DFW was cheeky too--this essay includes many urgent questions tucked inside asterisks.  To wit:  "**Is it possible really to love other people? If I'm lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential relief - I need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isn't a big part of love caring more about what the other person needs? How am I supposed to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody else's needs that I can't even feel directly? And yet if I can't do this, I'm damned to loneliness, which I definitely don't want ... so I'm back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons. Is there any way out of this bind?**"

I know, I know--this is pretty abstract stuff that isn't gonna pay the bills or make the traffic flow smoothly on your ride home.  It's far easier to ignore these kinds of questions and settle into a normal routine.   But since I spend most of my life (too much of it, really) in my head anyway, these questions feel natural, important, and worth pondering.

Some other avenues of appreciation:  Foster Wallace was a Midwesterner who eventually achieved great success in the coastal conclaves that foster most of America's high brow writing.  But he never forgot where he came from.  His essay about grieving on September 11, 2001 in Bloomington, Illinois (he was teaching there at the time) is moving.   Not owning a TV, that morning he goes over to an elderly woman's house, whom he knows from church--yes, church! what kind of Serious Writer goes to church anyway? this is why I love him--and gathers with several other elderly ladies to watch the news.  By  this point Foster Wallace had published the behemoth Infinite Jest, won a MacArthur genius grant, and appeared on Charlie Rose multiple times.  He was a bonafide member of this nation's intelligentsia, and felt a piercing alienation from the kindly ladies gathered on the couches:  "What these Bloomington ladies are, or start to seem to me, is innocent. There is what would strike many Americans as a marked, startling lack of cynicism in the room. ...part of the horror of the Horror was knowing, deep in my heart, that whatever America the men in those planes hated so much was far more my America...than it was these ladies'." (From: "The View from Mrs. Thompson's.")

Every time I used to go to home to Ohio I would return to DC or NYC and lament to Helen that I didn't know how to relate to my birthplace anymore.  These laments became predictable.  Life didn't feel bad or wrong in Columbus, just so incredibly different from where I was living now.  As I've gotten a bit older this anxiety has faded, and I now look back with true fondness at my birthplace.  I attribute my sincerity and attempt to give everyone the benefit of the doubt to growing up there.  But at the same time I can't ever see living in Columbus again.  This is a conundrum, but when I read Foster Wallace I feel understood.

And there's more...DFW manages the rare feat of being evenhanded yet passionate.  Last year I worked for many months on an essay called "On the Perch"--which still needs a lot of work.  The essay details how I can usually see both sides of an issue and thus have a hard time being a political activist.  And yet, I somehow feel I should be an activist because there are so many manifest injustices in this world.  (Sven Birkerts's "Why I am Not an Activist" is in the same vein, and that piece remains a touchstone for me.)   Injustices are horrible, but the problem is that--if you really take the time to untangle the threads of a given situation--it is hard to tell who is really to blame.  One example, as discussed in the essay "Host":  Right wing talk radio can indeed be a toxic hate fest, motivated by money and ratings rather than ideology or honest conviction.  And yes, one target demographic for such talk is truckers with gun racks in their vehicles.   But here's the rub:  All those liberals in chic New York salons who are ever so outraged by Rush Limbaugh likely have no respect at all for poor Mr. Trucker, even though he is working class and could clearly use some Democratic intervention.  They likely would have a hard time saying two sentences to Mr. T., despite their advanced education and close readings in class theory over the years.  So who's worse, really?  Mr. T or the outraged liberals? (See Flannery O'Connor's "Everything that Rises Must Converge" for a variation on this theme.)

And that's the final lesson of David Foster Wallace, and it goes all the way back to the golden rule:  Treat everyone--and that means everyone--with dignity and respect.  All of the obituaries for DFW noted his incredible humility and grace, how he didn't swagger and was actually very sweet.  By now shouldn't we have figured out that kindness counts far more than intelligence?  Sure--the best combination is to use intelligence (and Foster Wallace was wicked smart) to advance the life and interests of someone else.  But if all you've got is a penchant for slinging words and no ennobling purpose for doing so, then you're not worth reading.

The Future of Books

Tonight I attended an interesting Commonwealth Club panel discussion about the future of books, which included the co-owner of my favorite bookstore in SF, Green Apple Books.  Kevin Hunsanger of Green Apple was great--clearly passionate about books as physical objects and treasures, but also appreciative of the value of the Web for extending traditional research and enabling other kinds of research that weren't possible before.  He joked that in preparing for the talk he hadn't read a single book.

Dan Clancy of Google Book Search was also on the panel; he gently sparred with Pamela Samuelson of UC Berkeley Law about whether the recently amended Google Books Settlement offers enough privacy protections and assurance that Google won't become a price-gouging monopoly over time.  I err on the side of giving the settlement a chance--not because I'm comfortable with Google as the guardian of our cultural heritage, but because I'm not sure if cultural institutions like LC and NLM would have ever risen to this challenge.

Brewster Kahle made an impassioned plea for a more commons-based approach to digitization than we'll have with Google.  And Jared Friedman of Scribd pointed out that the very definition of a book is in great flux.  By my lights moderator David Hellman, librarian at San Francisco State, was a bit too attached to the notion of a book as a physical object.  I love the feel of a good book like anyone else, but ultimately good writing is good writing whether it's in print or on a screen.

All panelists felt that a healthy commingling between print and electronic media is possible, if not inevitable.  These discussions of the future often pit digital utopians against print-loving Luddites, and never the twain shall meet.  The truth is more complicated, and more hopeful--print will likely remain the medium of choice for engrossing novels, but e-readers may gradually corner the market for some forms of non-fiction.  We still have radio even though there's TV, after all, so I think we will always have books in multiple forms.

Blogging as Catharsis

Today I read a fascinating memoir by the poet Frederick Seidel in the November issue of Harper's, in which the poet declaims on his love of motorcycles.  I still have absolutely no desire to own--or even to ride--a motorcycle, but I now have a better appreciation of the motivations of someone who does.

Here's the sentence that struck me most: "I had to explain this mortifying event to myself and to the world."  Seidel is referring to a terrible accident he had while riding a motorcycle in Vermont.  But this sentence explains the urge--inexplicable to those who do not have it--for any writer (and other artists) to publicly grapple with difficult personal experiences.

Certainly I have done that this year, as part of my process for coping with and healing from the divorce.  I  could have written in a diary, or perhaps just emailed with close family and friends (I used email a lot too).  But I was compelled to be public even though I didn't have to.

Why?  For the most part it was simply the compulsion to share, as Seidel expresses so well.  Growing up, pre-Web, I gravitated early and strongly to the personal essay as the most elemental form of writing.  I devour novels and am moved by poems, but nothing strikes a chord for me as much as a life laid bare on the page or screen.

I tried not to blog everything that came to mind, saving up my insights for when they seemed substantial.  And I decided to stop writing about the divorce altogether on the day it was official.  There is no doubt in my mind that I would be less whole today if I hadn't done this. Blogging was my catharsis.

An unanticipated, but gratifying, effect of the public aspect of my writing is that it helped others.  (This benefit seems obvious in retrospect, but I wasn't thinking about it at the time.)  One day a college friend, who is now a church minister, wrote to say that my posts were proving helpful as he counseled couples who are having difficulties in his church.  He appreciated my candor, which brought tears to his eyes.  And he felt that since I could be so honest about what I was going through, I had a good chance of coming out a stronger person on the other side.

I hope so, and I know so.  And the truth  is that I would not trade a minute of my time with Helen, because it made me who I am today.   For as Jack Gilbert asks, "How can they say the marriage failed?"