Well, the offices of the Printculture empire (headquartered in Delaware, to avoid corporate income tax) were abuzz this week with the news that we'd been called “the culture blogzine” in an article at the BBC. The use of the definite article was probably, S L Kim pointed out, the best thing about the BBC piece, which basically made me look like a “gaming freak” (as one friend remarked) and completely misrepresented my major narrative claim. That latter error was eventually corrected, however, thanks to the work of BBC license fee-payer J.T. Green, whose efforts produced the following response from the article's author:
...which you have to admit is kind of charming. Apologizing for mistakes something they do better across the pond, apparently.
Meanwhile, around the blogosphere, everyone wanted a piece of the culture blogzine: a mention and series of comments over at Terra Nova, a reprinting at Always Black, a long and really interesting piece by Tanner at The Means, a short posting by “guy” (a person named Guy, or just a guy) on his own blog, something else from Mike Houser. The impeccable Charlie Bertsch and his commenters also chimed in. All this on the same day that Google finally started returning the site in search results and frankly, it wasn't clear that we'd be able to hold off on trashing the Printculture offices with a giant drunken party.
Then Laura Berry, prodded toward the BBC piece by the machinations of yours truly, produced this soberingly intelligent response:
A different thought — that “modern addiction” (I just made that up) is essentially a nostalgic idea, very Romantic. We are only addicted, these days, to the things that define our fast-paced technologically-advanced consumer world: the internet, the gym, EverQuest, porn, television, food, shopping. To speak of addiction is to take the Romantic view, lamenting the end of the coach journey.
What's missing in modern addiction's nostalgia for a Romantic ideal of self-dispersal and loss is, perhaps, opium's “eloquence”: to be addicted to porn, to EverQuest, or to shopping is in each case to be in the grip of an embarrassing, mute desire.
The muteness of that desire matched, to be sure, by the loquaciousness of the ex-addict: in some sense, quitting is one of the most powerful ways through which we moderns authorize ourselves to speak.
Keep those cards and letters coming.
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