A Novel Beginning

Call me I, and this is the story of my life. I am you. I am me. I am everyone. Perhaps this is not my story at all, but everyone's story. I can only claim my small part. Let me explain who I am and why I write to you.

Many people these days do not read books. Oh, we still read--emails, news, each other (in the form of blogs). Maybe we pick up a magazine now and then. But, nothing has the same energy and pulse as an updated blog. We read the date and scan the page, excited by the words that have recently sprung from the mind of a blogger.

Blogs are essentially narssistic. I talk about me. I contemplate my life and ponder my existence. I wonder why I am here, why love is love, why the sky is blue, and I read my blog over and smile with satisfaction. Then, I read someone else's blog. I am everywhere these days.

It was bound to happen, right? Novels have always been a humanistic artform, interested in the dramatics of the individual human life. We have college courses where we dissect the voices in a given novel. Who speaks? Who does not? Who is marginalized? Silenced?

These days, we have fewer novels and fewer people reading them for the simple reason that we have internalized the narrator. Novels come in three parts, the trinity of storytelling: author, narrator, character. In blogs, the author and narrator completely collapse, and we become our own characters. Our lives suddenly seem more dramatic and purposeful. We begin moving through our day, hearing a voice narrate our lives ("this would be a good thing to post on my blog," we think).

Yet, the minute we write our thoughts and experiences down, they become less "true"--like a dream we try to retell, often filling in the gaps with overthinking and analysis. We censor, edit, and try to give "order" to the events. Blogs do the same.

And, why do we read each other's blogs? Do I really care about my friend's latest date? Or, my friend's philosophy regarding different brands of dog food? The answer is simple: I read these blogs to validate myself. In the movie Shadowlands, one of the characters says, "We read to know we're not alone." These days, it seems, we read and write blogs because we are alone. Or, at least, maybe we like to think we are--unique, endowed with a special perspective on the world.

Blogging seems to be an attempt to make meaning out of our lives, to find what has been sucked away by television and movies, turning us into even more ferocious voyeurs. And, stalkers. We can peek through the curtains of this cyber-window and blogs throw the curtain open. Blogs confirm what I have long believed: writers are closet exhibitionists. These days everybody is a writer and the Internet is a big closet.

Years from now, in college courses, perhaps the question will be asked: who is the greatest literary figure of the 21st century? The answer now becomes--"I." I now read my own life, create a narrative from the banality of doing laundry or mowing my lawn or choosing between brands of tampons.

Blogs allow us to do what novels are no longer capable of. We do not read and identify with the heroes. We do not vicariously read a novel and apply it to our own existences. These days, we are the heroes we read. Blogs give the semblance of control and meaning. If I was cut off in traffic, no problem, I will blog about it and it will be come a lesson in tolerance. If I got my oil changed, it is a diversion as I think about describing the way the mechanic smelled of hot grease and Camels and how oil changes are metaphoric for how we all need a change now and then to run more smoothly.

So, here is chapter one of my novel blog. Call me I. Call you I. We are all I. And, I am these words. A character to revival any of Austen's fine heroines, Hemingway's drunks, or the Bronte's dark and brooding lovers. But, while those are condemned to leather-bound prisons with their imaginary lives withering among the dusty, yellowing pages, I throb with the promise of flesh and blood. I am hot with life.

Who is the greatest literary figure of the 21st century?

I am.