"Publishing" in the Electronic Digital Void

As an online author, I have been guided, for better or worse, by two somewhat contradictory notions of publication. One is derived from a French critic I used to read and admire quite a lot, Roland Barthes, who once suggested that we write for the pleasure of reading ourselves. And I would have to agree that one of my early pleasures as a young writer was seeing something I'd written published. In print it gathered more ontological and existential weight than in mere typescript. But while this satisfaction was genuine, it was always rather short-lived. Despite the appearance of permanence, it became increasingly obvious to me that nothing I had published was destined to last, except in the accidental ways that old literary journals continue to exist in the moldering stacks of various library collections. The other notion of publication I've lately been drawn to comes from one of my all time favorite authors: J.D. Salinger. At some point publication became so fraught and painful to him that he simply ceased publishing his work. And yet we are told he continued to write, one must presume primarily for his own pleasure in continuing to read what he had written.

Now I have discovered a sort of magical electronic compromise for myself. Thanks to Google's Blogger I am able to write (and publish) just as my own personal whims and passing fascinations might dictate, without having to concern myself with the desires and directives of publishers or even of other readers. And while it is true that sometimes someone may happen to stumble onto something I've posted here, that is not really the point. The point for me is simply the pleasure of the text, the momentary and ephemeral delight derived from writing and reading what one has written. Is this really any different from the rather less than satisfactory print publication of my previous efforts? I would have to say that for me it is. Here my imagination can range over whatever topics interest me. I put them up for myself to satisfy that fleeting interest. I can return to them whenever I please, knowing they will be around, at least for a while, so long as Google keeps faith with all of us bloggers. But if they should disappear, as I suspect eventually they must, little will actually be lost. I've had my fun (and so have you). The rest, as Hamlet said, is silence, or in our case the vast and looming digital void.

Of course, there's also the possibility that this stuff could linger for years, even after I'm gone, another ghost blog for web surfers to stumble on and wonder at, like so many others whose creators have forgotten to delete them or make provisions for the disposal of their digital property. And that too has its appeal. In the end it's no different from any other form of publication. Only the accidents of time will determine what lasts and for how long. And, after all, nothing is forever, not even diamonds (unless you want to count American presidential elections, which don't last forever either but only seem to because as soon as one ends another one begins). So with that I say, "go little blog," and if you run into Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde out there, say hello.