So when I was approached by the British Library to be part of its national web archiving project last year, I admit to having felt a great sense of satisfaction.
Snapshots of the blog have now been permanently archived at this page, while the blog is also listed in the Library's politics and blogs collections.
In theory this means my grandchildren in 50 years' time will be able to read the blog to find out what grandad was up to back in the Noughties. Assuming I am lucky enough to have any, of course, and provided the world doesn't end before then.
When I heard that the blog had been archived, I did give some fairly serious thought to knocking it on the head, and treating what has now been preserved for posterity as a completed body of work.
But quite apart from the fact that this would have amounted to a rather arbitrary cut-off point, I found myself thinking that if the blog ceased to exist, I would probably have to reinvent it.
As Iris Murdoch wrote in The Sea, The Sea: "Life, unlike art, has an irritating way of bumping and limping on, undoing conversions, casting doubts on solutions, and generally illustrating the impossibility of living happily or virtuously ever after."
And since this blog was never meant to be art, merely a reflection of what has been happening in British politics and in my own life since 2005, I figure it had better "bump on" for a while longer yet....
4 comments:
At the risk of starting a Friday blog spat, Paul, I'd like to argue that good art - or at any rate good writing - should do exactly what Iris Murdoch claimed it doesn't.
well at least they'll know you were the first journo in England to call for an English Parliament. It's true, I would know. They don't call me hotspur for nowt.
David,
If you're right about that, then blogging is really the only valid form of literature, since all printed works by necesssity have to have a beginning and end due to the finite nature of the paper on which they appear.
Hence I look forward to seeing your, presumably interminable, debut novel appear online.
Paul
Nah, books can do all of that.
"Bumping and limping on, undoing conversions, casting doubts on solutions, and generally illustrating the impossibility of living happily or virtuously ever after."
Doddle.
None of the above requires a novel (for example) not to finish. Besides, a really endless book (rather than an unfinished book, a book with multiple endings, or Finnegans wake*) would not only remove the satisfaction of finishing the thing (and presumably the challenge of starting another) but would spoil the fun of choosing the closing lines.
[*Possibly the best example of a work never intended to be finished is Byron's Don Juan]
I'm not buying the blogging-as-literature dummy, but it is at least akin to serial publishing, of which I approve wholeheartedly.
What do you say to that?
David
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