Wednesday, May 26, 2004

This week's New Yorker featured a much blogged-about article entitled "A Book in You" by Daniel Radosh. While it's true that as bloggers we at Standard Deviance might be a tad biased, we saw some interesting underlying themes in this article. Thus we have taken excerpts from the piece and prepared our own interpretations, which can be found below. Enjoy!

Original:Reading blogs on company time is hardly unheard of, but Lee does not so much read as prospect, sifting through sloppy thinking, bad grammar, and blind self-indulgence for moments of actual good writing.
Our Version:This woman is a saint for bothering to train these blogger-monkeys to stop throwing their feces about their cages and start writing in coherent sentences. No wonder she is the only one in the field.

Original: Sometimes she writes to a blogger only to get the e-mail equivalent of a blank stare. The pseudonymous author of The Minor Fall, The Major Lift was particularly unreceptive. "What am I going to write a book about?" he replied.
Our Version: Kate Lee does her very very best to teach the shit-throwing animals to use knives, forks, and the past participle but some of the bloggers seem to prefer wallowing in their piles of dung. They even like their style of writing. How odd. Obviously not all of the bloggers can be saved.

Original: Still, she remains something of a curiosity in this scene. "People tell me all the time, 'You should blog.' But I don't have the need to share everything I'm thinking."
Our Version: The monkeys try to suck Lee into their disgusting circle of daily-posting and bad-writing, but luckily Lee has the wiles to fight off the pack. "Post with us," they call to her. "Be self-centered and self-important," they chant. Lee knows, however, where the blogger's path leads and thus she turns her back on the beasts.

Original: "Anyway, I've started working with a couple of graduates of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. It's very exciting. They're interesting writers - with training, and degrees to show for it."
Our Version: Lee has found another pack of monkeys to do her bidding who already understand the merits of forks, knives, and complete sentences. Soon bloggers will be obsolete, like the rotary telephone and AOL.

Note: We've been told that Kate Lee is actually a nice person. We'll hold off on judging her until we actually meet her.