The Labyrinth Unbound: Weblogs as Literature

The novel is, as Doody (1996) reminds us after Henry James, “‘a loose baggy monster.’ And it is so chiefly because it does not acknowledge the distinction between… Form and Matter” (p.304). The weblog likewise collapses form and matter such that they can only ever be understood in tandem. It is the intersection of these multiple collapses, the particular set of opportunities and problems presented by the weblog as a written outlet, that best defines this new literary mode. It is not, as Gallagher (1995) reminds us regarding the novel, simply a question of fact versus fiction, or true versus false (xvi-xviii, pp. 162-165). Instead, the weblog is an engaged performance of these collapsed distinctions in which the personalized content, unique technical delivery system, and specific set of codes through which authors and audience meet all interact to form an original project.

One element of that project is a less defined distinction between fact and fiction, or between stories and those who tell them. Despite frequent and lingering questions about whether online voices are “honest” or “real,” and concerns about webloggers presenting themselves truthfully, the particular features of the weblog make these questions all but irrelevant in many cases. Readers of fiction are typically asked to identify specifically with a narrator or at least a narrative presence, experiencing vicariously the imagined events of the characters’ imagined lives. Reading the newspaper or an academic journal, on the other hand, we are asked not to identify with a narrative or authorial voice, but rather to read with no attention to voice at all—to read facts and opinions within a vacuum of “pure” information. A typical weblog offers both factual and interpretive information at once, making the distinction between truth and fiction irrelevant in favor of differentiation between trustworthy and untrustworthy. In one especially rich illustration of this, Delacour (2003) writes,

“When I was in middle-school,” Ikuko told me, “I hated my name.” We were lying in her bed, drinking champagne, fooling around. I traced her name in the glossy film of perspiration on her stomach. (On our second date, I’d asked her to write the characters for me. Since then I’d written them dozens of times in my notebook and on scraps of paper.) I could already guess what she wanted to say.