Dan's Metablog: Blogging and Narrative: Another sidenote: How blogs end

Another sidenote: How blogs end Sunday, March 12 3:28 PM

Ever since I read "How do diaries end?" I've been thinking about the unique way in which weblogs can be permanent, public, and yet never finished. Tequila Mockingbird can leave her site for months and there's still the expectation (perhaps barely noticed, if you're using RSS) of new updates. Doubly so in her case, since we know she has an executor who'll update the site if she dies.

Some blogs do end officially, with a last statement by the writer, or, as with that blogger who was murdered, the intervention of a deep narrative of which most readers become aware — but obsolesence is the norm, and in this genre obsolence always carries with it a note of uncertainty. We think the fabula (which stems from the meatspace life of the writer) is still going on somewhere, and that the story could perhaps be picked up again.

I love S/Z, and it strikes me that many of my theoretical issues with this book would disapear if it had been chopped up, shuffled around a bit, and presented as a weblog. No closing of the book's own list; instead, a continued expectation of further interpretations.

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