The day after spending nearly 12 hours listening to a lot of smart people try and situate blogging into some sort of journalism tradition, it was a refreshing to read a post today from Tyler Cowen, one half of the economist duo that write the blog Marginal Revolution. Cowen writes in praise of a new book by Adam Sisman which chronicles James Boswell's writing of the life of Samuel Johnson.
Cowen suggests — and I agree — that in describing Boswell, Sisman is describing the prototype of a form of writer which would not appear for another 200 years — the blogger.
Here is Sisman on Boswell, as quoted by Cowen:
Boswell's plain, direct prose was easy to read, and appealed to twentieth-century readers as [Samuel] Johnson's mannered, classical style never could. Moreover, Boswell's interest in himself, which seemed so peculiar to his contemporaries, was very much more acceptable two centuries later. Indeed, Boswell seemed to offer a unique combination: a writer who poured the contents of his mind freely into his journal, without either embarrassment or knowingness…
Later Sisman says Boswell, “also set new scholarly standards; his verification of every possible detail, which seemed so eccentric to his contemporaries, would become the norm. In doing what he did, he relied mainly on instinct, his sense of what would serve his purpose best.”
To which Cowen comments: “And like many bloggers, Boswell often got in trouble for writing up his private conversations with others.”