(8:07 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Searching for new blogs

Here's how I got into the blog business: I enjoyed reading This Modern World on Salon. I noticed that it had a link to Tom Tomorrow's "frequently updated web page." I followed the link and noticed that it had a weird format. I started following other links, most of which ended up on my blogroll over there. Since Tom Tomorrow is a political cartoonist, his blog is mainly political, and so are the blogs he reads. My interests, however, are not entirely political. I like to have more of a literary and philosophical edge to things, not to get bogged down in the tedious details (i.e., "actually knowing stuff"). Thus lately I've started to think that I've placed this blog into the wrong circle. If Atrios or Kevin Drumm or Josh Marshall were to stumble across The Weblog, there's no particular reason they should enjoy reading it or recommend it to their readers. I did get that shout-out from SullyWatch that one time, but I think it was pretty much a fluke.

Also, readership issues aside, I get kind of bored with reading snarky posts about how stupid Republicans are. I hate Republicans as much as the next guy, but they do so many stupid things that focussing on every detail doesn't seem to be very helpful. In other words, I'd prefer a more broadly literary or philosophical approach to the matter, such as Norman Mailer or Gore Vidal or Slavoj Zizek can provide -- even if none of them gets it exactly right, their arguments strike me as more productive and thought-provoking than "Man, Bush is still a bastard...." (That's probably why I'm starting to "forget" to read every Krugman column.) I think that partisan conflict is very necessary and important, and I don't mean to insult anyone who wants to engage in it, since I fully intend to engage in it sometimes -- just not all the time.

Plus, it would be fun to read about something other than politics in a blog sometimes. Slacktivist had some wonderful literary analysis with his Left Behind posts, which seem to have stopped, and Matthew Yglesias, who is otherwise an eloquent Democratic party hack, has the occasional philosophical post (sadly, from an analytic perspective) -- but other than that, I come up empty-handed. The Right Christians, like Slacktivist and Jared Woodard, are running more of a Christian political blog than a strictly theological blog (though Jared did have that one post on Rahner, which seems to have been met with complete incomprehension by his readership). So far, I have enjoyed reading John and Belle Have a Blog, based mainly on a very long post in which John dissects the "bad writing" debate (sadly, from an analytic perspective), as well as one post on Unfogged that answers his post from a continental point of view -- but I don't really have a good feel for what those blogs are really about yet. Maybe those posts were flukes.

What is the point of this post, you ask, if you haven't already gotten bored? I guess I'm wondering if I'm asking for things that blogs just can't give. I'd be interested to see book reviews and music reviews and movie reviews and maybe some literary analysis or philosophical or theological argument in a blog. I'll admit I'm a hypocrite because I don't do all of that in my own blog. Maybe if I just start doing that kind of thing, other similar blogs will find me. Maybe there aren't other blogs that fit that. Maybe I should just give up on the blogosphere and get a subscription to The New Criterion or Critical Inquiry or The New York Review of Books. Maybe I need to take the literary magazines out of the bathroom and read them at times when I'm not also taking a crap. What does it say about me that the only time I ever seriously engage with the legacy of W. B. Yeats or read detailed profiles of the most powerful men in our nation or take in a contemporary poem is when I am shitting?

In short, the next movie I watch, I am going to review. In fact, I would review the last movie I saw, if it weren't the absolutely abyssmal Radio. Thinking about that movie longer than the two hours I threw away in the theater is a really depressing prospect. Also, the next album I listen to, I will review, even though Robb's probably better suited for that (he has genuine indy cred, while I had to go and ruin mine by listening to The Strokes in my car the other day).

Note to co-bloggers: I'm not trying to tell you what to write. I enjoy all your posts and am glad to have them on The Weblog. Also, keep in mind that I'm probably not going to follow through on the resolutions expressed in this post.

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