What’s “arts blogging”? Blogging about the arts, of course, as practiced by those like Terry Teachout and his compatriot, Our Girl In Chicago, at the weblog About Last Night. Terry's a skilled self-promoter, and recently posted this polite request, which I pass along as a favor to Terry:
A message to everyone out there: Tell your friends about us. We don't advertise. Instead, we count on you (and our fellow bloggers) to spread the word. This blog isn't just for New Yorkers, or big-city types in general. It's for everyone, everywhere, who's interested in the arts...and tonight it's being read more than halfway around the world.
A subgenre of arts blogging is called "lit blogging"--that's blogging about literature, folks. An example is The Reading Experience, in which Daniel Green posted the following statement of purpose:
I would like to test the proposition that the internet, in the form of the so-called "blogosphere," can provide a forum for a new kind of literary criticism, more compacted and concise, perhaps, than conventional print lit/crit, but serious criticism nonetheless.
The blogosphere is very interesting indeed . . .
UPDATE 5/1/04 On re-reading the quote from Terry, it occurs to me to point out, in my usual smart-ass way, that not only is this blawg being read halfway around the world, but it has also been linked to by bloggers from Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, and most recently, Japan. (The link from Japan is quite unique if you've got the Japanese fonts; it is also intriguing--what's the writer saying? Probably something about the need for tort reform in Madison County, Illinois.)
In addition to getting my daily fix at Arts & Letters Daily, occasionally I like to take my laptop to bed and read the blog of a Bookslut.
Posted by: Abnu | April 29, 2004 at 07:53 AM