The Pakistani Spectator

My site is focused on anything having to do with reading, though I named it “Read, Write, Now” in order to give me flexibility to talk about anything I deemed important.  Still, I’m largely interested as an academic right now in the status of reading in culture–primarily American culture, but also globally.  Are we entering a post-literate society, or a post-literary society.  Does reading online affect the brain differently than reading a book?  How are connections between readers made and sustained, and what role do they play in the culture more generally?  How do Americans in general view reading as an activity?  These are some of the questions that interest me, though I also find time to talk about random junk that just comes to mind.

To some degree I started this blog to give myself a different way of writing, and possibly reconnect to a different part of my brain.  I’m an academic and in some sense have been writing all my life.  Nevertheless, I had grown tired of the format of the traditional scholarly journal article.  I’ve published in most of the leading journals of my field, I’ve published a scholarly book, and have another that I hope a publisher will pick up soon.  Still, I felt that this form was growing a little stale for me.  I wanted to connect more broadly with literate and broadly educated audiences, rather than with academic specialists.  I think nothing gives me more pleasure than writing an excellent book review for a generally educated audience.  Blogging struck me as a new and different form that would let me be a little less structured, a little more connected to the id (if I were a Freudian) and less driven by the superego–which is where I thin k most academic writing comes from (again, if I were a freudian).  Generally speaking I think its’ important for a writer to continue experimenting and doing new things.  This is partly because there are always new things to discover, but it’s also because we become new and different people as we age.  There’s no reason to suspect that the forms of expression that were adequate for us 20 years ago are adequate for us now, even if there’s nothing inherently wrong with them.

Hmm.  I don’t really know how to answer this one.  So far I’m not a celebrity blogger, that’s for sure.  I guess I’ve just enjoyed a variety of different experiences where, in the process of pursuing the freedom that blogging allows, I’ve discovered new ways of thinking, connections between things I hadn’t been entirely sure existed.  I’ve also been pleased that a number of people pick me up and keep me on their blog roles.  I do a disastrously bad job of keeping up my site and don’t return the favor nearly as often as I should.  There’s actually a lot of good sites out there devoted to books and reading.  I’m just usually too busy with reading and writing and administering and teaching to keep up with most of them.

See above.  There’s a handful of bloggers that i keep in touch with, but this aspect of blogging hasn’t been as big a part of my experience as it is for others.  This might be a function of age.  I came to blogging in my late 40s, and so i didn’t experience or imagine it as a form of social networking, which is extremely important to a lot of younger people.  Maybe that will come with time.  I’ve been lucky to have a few good friends online who link to my blog.  And David Rothman over at teleread.com was very supportive of my blogging early on.  I blogged on his site for a while, though I’ve let that lapse for the last little bit.

This may be an odd thing to say, but i really think Obama’s deployment of his fundraising apparatus was astonishing.  I had never given to a political campaign, and yet I found myself giving 25 dollars repeatedly over the course of three or four months, and I still give occasionally.  I think Obama has really tapped in to something there that is transforming the American political landscape.  I think there’s a lot of folks for whom his political site has become something of a social network as well, and that has profound implications.  Still, somewhat like the blogging, I didn’t quite take that much advantage of that stuff.  I was content to contribute online and give support in other ways.  Didn’t really take advantage of all the local networking that Obama’s stuff made possible.

Hard to say, but I think probably so.  I think we’ll have to see how it plays out in the hands of politicians without all of Obama’s charisma.  Though I think he’s a visionary politician, it really is true that there’s a touch of the celebrity and cult status surrounding his ascendancy.  That made younger people especially respond to him in the same way they might respond to the latest album by U2.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’m not sure if the mobilization was coming from the electronic resources used in new ways, or if it was a function of Obama’s charisma itself.

Probably nothing except me.  I guess I have a relatively unique combination of interests in some respects.  I am a strong advocate of traditional book reading, but I’m intrigued by and open to new technologies.  Most folks in these debates choose sides and demonize one another.  I actually think that book reading and e-text reading lend themselves to different kinds of cognitive skills, and would like to imagine them together somehow.  My general cultural interests also links reading with politics and religion, which is not absolutely unique, but maybe the combinations are unique.

Perseverance.  There’s a lot to be said for sticking with something.  Also showing up on time.

Too many to describe.

Papua New Guinea (I lived there for a while as a kid and wouldn’t mind going back)

Anywhere in Italy where I could hear opera (I’ve never been and I love opera and would love to go)

Banff, Alberta Canada (I honeymooned there, but due to lack of funds we only had three days.  I would love to go back to the canadian rockies for a few weeks)

Are they carrying a book?

My English teacher my senior year in high school said I would have a hard time making it through college because I couldn’t write.  This though I was valedictorian of my senior class.  So it goes.

i wish someone would tell me!

No, but it is extremely hard to keep one up regularly over time.  A lot of late nights.  Or, as in this response, squeezing it in at work and somehow justifying it as worth the company’s time.

I think two things.  More knowledge is always better than less knowledge.  The more we understand about the world and our place in it, I think the less likely we will be to respond to situations with unjustified violence.  Unfortunately, too many bloggers are dedicated to spreading disinformation or various forms of textual merde.  Secondly, I think bloggers could work a little harder at creating forms of mutual respect rather than just spewing the first thing that comes to mind, much of which is less than friendly when it is not overtly hostile.

I spend too much time writing on my blog to have any time to read!

Interestingly, a lot of people respond to my thinking about Obama, which makes me think people care a great deal more about politics than about reading.  Secondly, people respond to my ruminations on the the fact that reading is viewed as somewhat suspect if not problematic in American culture.  I think a lot of readers experience this sense of alienation, and then judgement from those around them.

I know very little about Pakistan. i know that the impression in the United States is that it is an area of political instability that contributes to the volatility of that particular region of the world.  On the other hand, I sometimes wonder whether day-to-day life is really reflected in that assumption.

I’m more often amazed at how numbingly familiar and repetitive most bloggers really are.

This is only a guess based on study, but I would probably say something like “self-determination.”  Developed countries, relatively speaking, have more resources for controlling their own destiny and imposing their desires on others.  Poverty, underdeveloped infrastructure, and the like, make this kind of difficult for less developed countries.

I think the blogging fad is waning, which is different from thinking that blogging itself will go away.

I spend too much time doing it and neglecting other responsibilities.