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OVER the last two weeks I’ve been speaking about tradition with a number of accomplished women. My final installment includes a bit of a twist: The essayist Meghan Daum told me about a tradition she considers dangerous. Overuse of the “I” in storytelling is crowding out the larger world, she says.
…I feel like 70 percent of what people share on Facebook are personal essays. A lot of them are by women, writing about their experiences, and a lot of them are fantastic and smart, and rigorously thought through. But others, because of the pace of digital media, have the opportunity to rush and write something and then have something quote-unquote published. We’ve all done that; I’ve done that. I’m not casting aspersions on anybody. But that’s a real danger. Part of the process is having a process, and having an editor, and writing several drafts and having time pass before writing about this experience. The Internet has allowed a lot of first drafts to go out into the world. And when those are first-person, sometimes you get stuff that’s uncooked.
She also talks about the journalistic stakes, the role of feminism, the Rolling Stone rape scandal, how this works through the generations, and the triumph of Joan Didion.
Daum’s full piece is worth reading, and don’t miss her new book, The Unspeakable.
Daum’s comments confuse me. Most of what I see on Facebook is about 25 words long. Since when is that an essay? Why would anyone expect the little boxes of FB to be anything in general but personal and trivial? That’s what it’s designed to be and it virtually precludes anything else.
Even blogs are a bit different than essays. They are more like diaries, thoughts passed off at the moment, usually shorter than essays, and in general, that is how they should be read. And of course, the ideas in web discussion are “uncooked.” They aren’t essays, they’re dialog. Daum seems to view the web through the eyes of a Writer (capital W) accustomed to thought being a one-way street espoused by “authorities” housed behind the thick walls of institutions (like the LA Times.) Paper is hierarchical, but the web is a format where people engage with each other, where they think spontaneously, where they freely speculate and ponder aloud, where they write back with a reasonable expectation of discussion.
I also dislike her comments about the Rolling Stone article. I’m suspicious about the counter claims against the victim, like the Frat house not having a “social event” scheduled on the night of the rape. As if frat houses only socialized officially. That they would make an argument like that shows that they’re getting sly.
If Daum wants only “cooked” thought, she should reserve judgment in a case like this, and especially as a feminist, since many powerful people and organizations are under scrutiny and with large incentives to distort the truth if not outright lie.
“I” agree with you entirely but you didn’t mention the funny part, though her mention of Facebook as “essays”is pretty rich — Daum’s opening: Three “I’s” in one opening sentence: “The first person is a tradition I relate to and that I use; historically it’s been the voice I work in.”