From chronicles to blogs
Over the centuries newspapers have played an important role in keeping each and everyone of us informed and up-to-date on national and international events. However, newspapers had more than one purpose, they also wrote about everyday people, folks that built the unseen side of history. Many journalists and authors wrote chronicles, these short stories, either fiction or non, about ordinary people about you. According to Merriam-Webster, a chronicle is «a usually continuous historical account of events arranged in order of time without analysis or interpretation.» Chronicle is derived from the ancient Greek God of Time's name, Chronos. A chronicle would therefore be a tale of our time.
America has been a rich source to chronicles, as it accompanied the creation of a new nation. Authors such as Walt Whitman and world-renouned Mark Twain wrote in newspapers to give accounts on daily.
In the past 50 years, John Cheever & Raymond Carver peered into everyday life seeking for the odd, analyzing our society. Robert Altman eventually directed a movie, Shortcuts, based on some of Carver's short stories.
More recently, David Sedaris took us on a trip down Memory Ln. in his latest book, Dress your family in Corduroy and Denim (see sidebar). He took his pen and acutely described events of a family he knows so well : his own. His bittersweet opus, first published in the New Yorker, will take you from the sandy coast of Ocracoke, North Carolina, to the remote villages of cheese-making Normandy, France. One can feel tears dwell up when he talks of his mother's death, and yet we cannot stop laughing at his purposely naive description of the Dutch Santa Clause : an elf-less dude cruising in Spain, and originally from Turkey. So much for the North Pole, Rudolph the reindeer and Mrs. Santa...
I feel blogs are the new generation of chronicles. The right to write is no longer reserved to an elite, but is available to all. Furthermore, chronicles are no longer targeting a narrow group of people, but can aim for the entire world. Blog.com allows you just that. And with a pinch of style and some punch, you can turn your blog into an adventure, a slice of your life, or an imaginary narration. Lastly, we can browse and find inspiration in everyone else's writings, and this is perhaps the greatest gift of all...
It's two thumbs up for Dress your family in Corduroy and Denim.
[from http://our.blog.com]
America has been a rich source to chronicles, as it accompanied the creation of a new nation. Authors such as Walt Whitman and world-renouned Mark Twain wrote in newspapers to give accounts on daily.
In the past 50 years, John Cheever & Raymond Carver peered into everyday life seeking for the odd, analyzing our society. Robert Altman eventually directed a movie, Shortcuts, based on some of Carver's short stories.
More recently, David Sedaris took us on a trip down Memory Ln. in his latest book, Dress your family in Corduroy and Denim (see sidebar). He took his pen and acutely described events of a family he knows so well : his own. His bittersweet opus, first published in the New Yorker, will take you from the sandy coast of Ocracoke, North Carolina, to the remote villages of cheese-making Normandy, France. One can feel tears dwell up when he talks of his mother's death, and yet we cannot stop laughing at his purposely naive description of the Dutch Santa Clause : an elf-less dude cruising in Spain, and originally from Turkey. So much for the North Pole, Rudolph the reindeer and Mrs. Santa...
I feel blogs are the new generation of chronicles. The right to write is no longer reserved to an elite, but is available to all. Furthermore, chronicles are no longer targeting a narrow group of people, but can aim for the entire world. Blog.com allows you just that. And with a pinch of style and some punch, you can turn your blog into an adventure, a slice of your life, or an imaginary narration. Lastly, we can browse and find inspiration in everyone else's writings, and this is perhaps the greatest gift of all...
It's two thumbs up for Dress your family in Corduroy and Denim.
[from http://our.blog.com]
