A fairly wretched WSJ piece about blogging, upon the alleged 10th anniversary of the medium; might have been interesting around the alleged 6th.

At least Gen. Bergner, Xiao Qiang, and Jane Hamsher add some value.

Poor Tom Wolfe. He was interesting once, kids. I swear.

Comments

[Patrick Eakes]

I'll have to take your word for it that Wolfe was every interesting. Must have been before my time.

[Roch101]

Lots of good thinking in that piece, but yeah, Wolfe comes accross as dumb, what with his indictment of blogs being totally confined to criticism of Wikipedia.

[Ed Cone]

Wolfe was an innovative and important journalist and author, not to mention an often-entertaining writer, who chronicled everything from Kesey-era pscyedelia to badass early astronauts. Even some of his novels said interesting things about an era.

Lately, not so much.

[Kathryn Hopper]

I'll bet Charlotte Simmons could have been a blogging bad ass!
Who knew Mia Farrow was blogging?

[Anglico]

Wolfe.

Charlotte Simmons had a list of acknowledgments upfront that included my wife's name. She met with him a couple of times, talking about her views on college and co-eds these days.

I followed up with her help and asked Wolfe for guidance in getting an agent for the novel I've written. He was gracious enough to respond, but the response itself was telling: He said it's about luck and connections, not so much quality.

That's pretty dang depressing.

[David Wharton]

I thought Charlotte Simmons was a good read. Same for A Man In Full -- how could I not like a novel in which the main character becomes a born-again Stoic?

[Ed Cone]

I haven't read CS, but AMIF -- despite some great journalistic set pieces on financial and studhorse workouts -- was pretty awful as a novel in terms of writing and characterization.

[Anglico]

David.

You really thought it was a good read? Even with Jane's name in the front, I couldn't make it past the first hundred pages. It seemed like an old man writing about something he barely understood. And as an old man (and aspiring writer) it felt uncomfortably familiar.

[David Wharton]

I did, and some of the students who commented on my blog-review thought that Wolfe understood them pretty well.