Spent a very pleasant evening yesterday, in a marquee at Christ Church for an Oxford Literary Festival event, 'Blogging the Classics'.
This was billed as a debate about the relative merits of amateur and professional reading; as the write-up put it, "Whose judgements are more trustworthy when it comes to books?" The participants were Lynne Hatwell, aka dovegreyreader, Mark Thwaite of ReadySteadyBook, and academic critic John Mullan, moderated by John Carey.
Critics vs. bloggers, round #487? Happily, not so much.
Like many, I've been wearied by mainstream media coverage of litblogs; whether they're dismissing us all as illiterate halfwits on the strength of half an hour's googling, or ineptly jumping on the bandwagon because they want to be seen as down with Web 2.0, journalists and other pros don't seem to get us. (The fact that plenty of bloggers also review in print media, in particular, apparently escapes them). So the tone of last night's debate was a refreshing change: both sides had many good points to make, and the conclusion was not all cheery consensus, but all concerned appeared to be genuinely engaged by the question and by their fellow panelists' responses.
Mark Thwaite made a strong case for the rarely-acknowledged variety of the blogosphere, its sense of community and conversation, and its potential for serious, incisive discussion that goes well beyond the oft-caricatured "ZOMG I loved this book!!!" (He also referred to my co-blogger Victoria's recent reading of Trollope in positive terms, which earned him points. :-)) John Mullan spoke up for the professional critic as a bringer of depth and perspective and expertise, and for the unpopular idea (with which I have much sympathy) that some books really are better, and that it is possible to say how and why; he did, however, seem reluctant to see this type of engagement with literature as possible outside academia, which seems odd given that plenty of academics have blogs (I'm one, in training!). Finally, Lynne Hatwell delivered a warm, funny piece about reading as a way of life, and how writing about books is inescapably entwined with autobiography; she was excellent, and got a spontaneous round of applause when she was done!
Niall, who was taking notes throughout, has more detail here. We got chance to meet Mark and Lynne afterwards, briefly, which was lovely ("Oh, you're from Eve's Alexandria! Which one are you?") and made me think there really ought to be a litblogging convention some time...
~~Nic