Twentieth anniversary post

On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog. 

In recent years many posts have reflected on the past and present of literary blogging (it has no future) so I will not go over that waste land again except to wish more had followed the example of This Space. One of the very few, in fact the only one I can think of, has been Dan Fraser's Oubliette, which he appears to have forgotten, but he has continued writing elsewhere, such as at A Personal Anthology and Radical Philosophy, the latter reviewing a book that has influenced the direction taken by this blog over the years; one might say the opposite direction.

I'm always impressed by writers like Dan who can summarise a book with apparent ease. It's the one thing that slows me down, often to a frazzled halt. Although I see this as a personal failing, it may be a sign of what distracts from my true interests. With this in mind, last week Donald Clark, the learning theory guru who is himself very adept at summarising, posted a blog about Google's AI tool NotebookLM, which summarises books for you. I pasted my notes taken from various non-fiction books and was stunned by the breadth and clarity of what it delivered. If writing about literature can survive such technology it has to be in pursuing what rational exposition conceals, which in a literary blog may be found in its haphazard and discontinuous non-procedure.

One feature of NotebookLM which Donald Clark says will blow your mind is its automated podcast featuring two chirpy American voices discussing what you have uploaded. Here's what they've got to say about my recent ebook: The Opposite Direction. I apologise in advance.