In the Novem­ber Issue of The Atlantic, blog­ging king­pin Andrew Sul­li­van puts to words the inef­fa­ble plea­sure–and embar­rass­ing self-​exposure–of blog­ging. He lands on sev­eral beau­ti­ful for­mu­la­tions of the attrac­tion: the “instantly public” diary form, par­tic­i­pa­tion in the “online con­ver­sa­tion of humankind,” a “superficial medium” that “masked con­sid­er­able depth” via a single con­cep­tu­ally new tech­no­log­i­cal fea­ture, i.e., the hyperlink.

Sul­li­van strikes me as the per­fect blog­ger to con­sider the ontol­ogy of blog­ging, as his own blog, The Daily Dish, offers a per­fect exam­ple of the inevitable back­lash that comes from insta-writing.  His taste of crow was lead­ing a pas­sion­ate and emo­tional drum­beat up to the Iraq War in which he was guilty of nasty charges to war crit­ics and skep­tics, which he has since recanted and from which he con­tin­u­ally repents with an equally pas­sion­ate and emo­tional out­rage at the Bush administration’s tor­ture poli­cies and other crimes of war.

It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to return via his archives to the days after Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 and glance at posts every few months there­after to see the slow but seem­ingly inevitable evo­lu­tion (given what we now know) of one of the war’s staunchest sup­port­ers turned one of its most vir­u­lent crit­ics. As an avid blog reader, it’s one of my great­est thrills to see a writer strug­gle to sort through these issues in vir­tual real-​time while the arc of his­tory shapes our col­lec­tive under­stand­ing of WHAT HAP­PENED. These days, blogs them­selves can be seen as col­lec­tive under­stand­ing, and Sullivan’s jour­ney from sup­porter to critic can be read as a record of how Amer­i­can public opin­ion shifted from patriot’s fervor to buyer’s remorse over the span of just a few years.

One point in the arti­cle that struck me was the pre-​Internet blog­ging pio­neers Sul­li­van found in Pascal, Karl Kraus and the arche­typal blog­ger, Michel de Mon­taigne. His depic­tion jells with the idio­syn­crasy and moder­nity that I’ve always taken from Montaigne’s style:

Mon­taigne was living his skep­ti­cism, daring to show how a writer evolves, changes his mind, learns new things, shifts per­spec­tives, grows older—and that this, far from being some­thing that needs to be hidden behind a veneer of unchang­ing author­ity, can become a virtue, a new way of look­ing at the pre­ten­sions of author­ship and text and truth. Mon­taigne, for good mea­sure, also pep­pered his essays with myr­i­ads of what blog­gers would call exter­nal links. His own thoughts are strewn with and com­pli­cated by the apho­risms and anec­dotes of others.

As I’ve recently been spend­ing a lot of time with Montaigne’s Essays, I thought I’d con­tribute to the dis­cus­sion by offer­ing some more proof that Montaigne’s writ­ing can be thought of not only ahead of its time, but fully pre­sag­ing the dig­i­tal age.

In fol­low­ing, I present selec­tions from the Essays that should be read anew in the epoch of the Inter­net (cit: The Com­plete Essays, tr. M.A. Screech, New York: Pen­guin, 2003.):

My late father, a man of a decid­edly clear judge­ment, based though it was only on his nat­ural gifts and his own expe­ri­ence, said to me once that he had wished to set a plan in motion lead­ing to the des­ig­na­tion of a place in our cities where those who were in need of any­thing could go and have their require­ments reg­is­tered by a duly appointed offi­cial; for exam­ple: ‘I want to sell some pearls’; or ‘I want to buy some pearls.’ ‘So-and-so wants to make up a group to travel to Paris’; ‘So-and-so wants a ser­vant with the fol­low­ing qualifications’; ‘So-and-so seeks an employer’; ‘So-and-so wants a workman’; each stat­ing his wishes accord­ing to his needs. It does seem that this means of mutual adver­tis­ing would bring no slight advan­tage to our public deal­ings; for at every turn there are bar­gains seek­ing each other but, because they cannot find each other, men are left in extreme want. (”Something lack­ing in our civil administrations,” 251)

We were seek­ing each other before we set eyes on each other - both because of the reports we each had heard (which made a more vio­lent assault on our emo­tions than was rea­son­able from what they had said), and, I believe, because of some decree of Heaven: we embraced each other by repute, and, at our first meet­ing, which chanced to be at a great crowded town-​festival, we dis­cov­ered our­selves to be so seized by each other, so known to each other and so bound together that from then on none was so close as each was to the other. (”On Affec­tion­ate Relationships,” 212)

Knowl­edge is a dan­ger­ous sword; in a weak hand which does not know how to wield it it gets in its master’s way and wounds him, ‘ut ferit melius non didicisse’ [so that it would have been better not to have stud­ied at all]. (”On schoolmasters’ learning,” 158)

Aban­don­ing your life for a dream is to value it for exactly what it is worth. (”On diversion,” 945)

Most of all I am able to make and keep excep­tional and con­sid­ered friend­ships, espe­cially since I seize hun­grily upon any acquain­tance­ship which cor­re­sponds to my tastes. I put myself for­ward and throw myself into them so eagerly that I can hardly fail to make attach­ments and to leave my mark wher­ever I go. I have often had a happy expe­ri­ence of this. (”On three kinds of social intercourse,” 925)

I have never learned any lan­guage except by using it and I still do not know what an adjec­tive is nor a sub­junc­tive nor an abla­tive: yet here I am, turn­ing into a gram­mar­ian. (”On war-horses,” 321)

In short there is no plea­sure, how­ever proper, which does not become a matter of reproach when exces­sive and intem­per­ate. (”On moderation,” 225)

I agree with the opin­ion of the man to whom was pre­sented another man who was an expert at throw­ing grains of millet so clev­erly that they infal­li­bly went through the eye of a needle; he was asked after­wards to bestow a reward for such a rare abil­ity: where­upon he com­manded - very amus­ingly and cor­rectly, if you ask me - that the man who did it should be given two or three bas­kets of millet so that so fine a skill should not remain unprac­tised! It is a won­der­ful tes­ti­mony of the weak­ness of Man’s judge­ment that things which are nei­ther good nor useful it values on account of their rarity, nov­elty and, even more, their dif­fi­culty. (”On vain cun­ning devices,” 348)

It is impos­si­ble to argue in good faith with a fool. Not only my judge­ment is cor­rupted at the hands of so vio­lent a master, so is my sense of right and wrong. Our quar­rels ought to be out­lawed and pun­ished as are other verbal crimes. Since they are always ruled and gov­erned by anger, what vices do they not awaken and pile up on each other? First we feel enmity for the argu­ments and then for the men. In debat­ing we are taught merely how to refute argu­ments; the result of each side’s refut­ing the other is that the fruit of our debates is the destruc­tion and anni­hi­la­tion of the truth. (”On the art of conversation,” 1048)

And, while you’re blog­ging, be sure to enjoy a hot, fuel­ing refresh­ment from a national chain of shops fea­tur­ing wire­less Inter­net con­nec­tions and all the branded prod­ucts one could ever wish for:

My phi­los­o­phy lies in action, in nat­ural and present prac­tice, and but little in rati­o­ci­na­tion. Would that I could enjoy toss­ing hazel­nuts and whip­ping tops! (”On some lines of Virgil,” 950)