The Beauty and the Sorrow

Since I’ve been studying censorship for a while now, I thought it would be interesting to pay more attention to the copyright warnings in the books I read.  Part of my exploration of early modern censorship, I should explain, involves determining which steps were taken by authorities and, indeed, the print industry itself to establish the credibility of texts as both material objects and as sources of knowledge.  The establishment of what is today called “copyright” or even, more broadly, “intellectual property” was instrumental in that process, as a step ostensibly guaranteeing that the who, what, when, and where of a book were established.  It is fascinating to me to consider how much paratextual materials - both peritext and epitext - might influence how readers relate to the books they read. 

Fridays are my favorite archive days, mostly because they close at 1:00 instead of 4:00.  While the difference seems slight, three hours makes a huge difference when strapped to a wooden chair bent over dusty, faded, handwritten documents.  I always feel more accomplished at the end of a short day when there isn’t an excess of time available towards the end to pass time on the interwebs before one’s conscience says, “Well, we’ve officially stayed from open to close.”  No dithering today.  Just work.

And pizza.  Jeff and Ben and I went for pizza at, of all places to grab pizza in Vienna, Mario’s Pizzaria.  It was pretty good.  It is also cheap.  The atmosphere is strange, though not uncommon here as experience has shown.  By day it can pass for a mom-and-pop kind of place.  But by night one can imagine that it becomes a dive.  I had a beer for lunch.  Ben and Jeff initially seemed a bit shocked by this.  I don’t know why.  It was after noon.  It is a Friday.  We had just left “work.”  This is Europe.  Jeff eventually came around and had one too.  We chatted a bit.  College football mostly.  I know little about college football.  I’ve never been a college-sports fan.  While I attended large state schools for the most part, none of their programs were anything to get over-stimulated about.

On the way home I bought tickets for Marne and I to Budapest.  I’m excited.

Fuck.  I hope this gets more interesting.  I’ve never blogged before.  I’ve only kept a journal intermittently.  This is going to be awful, probably.  Hell, I don’t even read blogs.  Except Gawker.  But that stopped being a “blog” a long time ago in my opinion.  It’s all corporate now; a bunch of staff writers being paid to type snarky stuff on the internet for people like me who need to have culture manufactured for them and delivered to them in the comfort of their own homes.  I suppose I mistakenly equate “blogs” with non-corporate-sponsorship.  This might be justifiable, though.  Just because the NYT has an online edition doesn’t mean that it’s a “blog,” does it?  There’s nothing wrong with Gawker or its ilk per se.  I enjoy it.  And besides, we all sold out a long time ago.  Facebook and Tumblr are, of course, corporations.  So by my logic, I suppose all blogs have “corporate sponsorship.”  So what constitutes a blog anyway?  What is blogging?  If the New York Times blogs, then what exactly is the point of normal people blogging?  Or, to back things up a little bit, what’s the point of print journalism?  Ugh.  These are stupid questions about a stupid subject.   

Anyway, we’ll see how much longer this lasts.  I don’t believe that most people, even inherently interesting people, have anything interesting to blog about.  I certainly don’t.  But people are often contradictory in their beliefs and behaviors.  So here I am, writing to an imaginary audience.  That might be the allure of doing this, of posting life drivel on the internet: one’s potential audience is always potentially enormous, but one’s actual audience is actually a lot closer to zero.  But there’s a sense of wonder that makes it seems more interesting than will likely ever be.