Between “About Last Night”‘s first anniversary
and my nomination
to the National Council on the Arts, our mailbox is bulging. Here are some e-letters that caught my eye:
– “Congratulations on your first anniversary as a blogger. I’ve more or
less been reading you from the beginning–I don’t think I caught on
right away, but once I figured out what you were up to, I went back
and caught up with the first two or three weeks I’d missed. I was interested to see that you’d spent a happy afternoon scrolling
through your About Last Night archives, not long after your post
about not keeping keepsakes, and tossing out most of your old print
clips. Is a dust-free, spatially invisible archive somehow different
for you from a drawer full of yellowed clippings? Personally, if my
scribblings are available online, I don’t bother with a printout, yet
I do still maintain a drawer of my older magazine articles and
increasingly brittle newspaper cuttings–just in case I need them for
quick reference, of course.”
Well, “About Last Night” archives itself automatically with no additional effort from me! As for the old newspaper clippings, I feel considerably lighter for having consigned them to the recycling bin–but check back with me once I finish transferring my entire CD library to my iBook, which at this rate should happen early in the 22nd century….
– “My heartfelt congratulations on your first anniversary in the
blogosphere. Hope you have many more. By the time I discovered your blog some about eight months ago, I had
been a long-time reader of your essays in Commentary. It was your piece
on David Helfgott — you were, I believe, the only critic not to have
been fooled by that spectacle and to have had the courage to say so —
that made me a permanent devotee. If your blog could have a sub-title, I would suggest: