Is This Website a Valid Literary Medium?
February 25, 2025
In the summer of 1809, Samuel Taylor Coleridge began publication of his weekly “newspaper,” The Friend. Coleridge’s paper was quite unlike the other rags circulating England at the time: while they focused their attention on wartime news and politics, Coleridge opted to write about universal and eternal principles related to philosophy and literature. He styled the paper thusly:
THE FRIEND
A literary, moral, and political
WEEKLY PAPER
EXCLUDING PERSONAL AND PARTY POLITICS AND THE EVENTS OF THE DAY
Each week, Coleridge would publish an essay (or a fragment of an essay) about a topic of his choosing, and mail it directly to those who chose to receive it. In this sense, Coleridge’s newspaper had much more in common with the blog or newsletter of modern times, at least in terms of its method of distribution. The work itself was undertaken each week in a mad rush, with a 6000-word essay often dictated over the course of a single night — generally, the night before it needed to be sent off to the printers.
What set Coleridge apart, and what would set him apart even from all the Substacks and Wordpresses of today, was his subject matter. Although a commercial venture and constrained by pecuniary machinations that would eventually lead to its undoing, the newspaper was decidedly non-commercial, if not downright anti-commercial. Coleridge viewed his audience as patrons rather than customers, and his goal was not to appease but to educate and elevate them.
The style was romantic and meandering, full of allusions to German philosophy. The most consistent feedback he received over the first several volumes was that his writing was “obscure.” Friends and acquaintances often struggled to decipher what exactly he was trying to say. Those that did appreciate the work recognized it as intrinsically unpopular and unlikely to provide the sort of income that Coleridge hoped from it.
The reason for this is clearly found in the topics Coleridge chose to cover — or rather, not cover. “Personal and Party Politics and the Events of the Day” are exactly what sold newspapers back then, and they remain exactly what sell newsletters, Youtube channels, and podcasts today. To consciously and adamantly ignore — not only ignore, but demean — such topics was and is a surefire way to drastically shrink one’s potential audience.
Loyal readers of this website will, perhaps, have already started constructing certain parallels. From September of 2022 to January of 2024, I updated this website bi-weekly with impeccable punctuality, a feat that I consider my crowning achievement. The essays I wrote (and continue to write) were/are “an eclectic mix of literary criticism, personal writing, and philosophical investigations” (to quote myself from my About page.) Often obscure and invariably meandering, they have a tendency to gesture toward Immanuel Kant when times get tough. Like Coleridge’s ever-deferred plan to eventually publish an account of his travels in Malta, my RAINICHI 2023 project has still not quite reached Part One.
This newsletter, which began its life on the dreadfully commercial platform known as Substack, has, in its 3+ year run, never commented on politics or the news of the day, aside from one notable exception — and I believe readers will agree that the tone and nature of this exception, as well as the fact that the topic was not a “passing fancy” but a deep-seated conviction close to this writer’s heart, made that transgression more than forgivable.
While I never made any declaration of the fact, the exclusion of politics and current events from the essays on this website was and is a deliberate choice. In fact, I make sure to never write about any topic that is current or — to put a finer point on it — of any interest to anyone.
There are others who have achieved success with newsletters that bear a superficial resemblance to mine, but — to my mind, at least — they always have to sacrifice something to do so, and that Something is impossible for me to give up. That Something could be described as “creative freedom,” although not the type of creative freedom that we tend to associate with those words. Because the creative freedom I mean is primarily characterized by restraint. To sum it up in a word, I refuse to be frivolous, at least according to my own internal sense of frivolity. And the truth is that to publish weekly or even bi-weekly for an extended period of time, one must at a certain point incline toward frivolity, and once one has inclined in that direction, it is very difficult to straighten one’s self out again. As soon as one deigns to address that endless stream of trifling matters that proverbially “reach one’s desk” day after day, the jig is, as they say, “up.”
For whatever reason, I consider this website very serious and very sacred. The truth of the matter is that there is nothing written on here that does not accord with my fundamental principles. It is these principles guide me every time I ask myself, “Is this worth publishing?” or even, “Is this the right direction for this essay?”
This is why I can relate to such a self-serious man as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. And this is why I use words like “literature” and “essay” instead of “books” and “blog post.” I know that they conjure up an image of pompous self-importance to some, but to be quite frank, these people are not the audience! If you’re not willing to take the words seriously, then you should not be reading them — is there any more anti-commercial a proclamation than that?
But Balckwell, you may ask, how can you possibly consider yourself a serious man when you make so many jokes? I will answer by saying that what most people mean when they think of seriousness is merely the appearance of seriousness. They think of men with stern faces who never laugh and never let their guard down. But seriousness is far more and far less than that. Seriousness is about being rigorous and principled. Rigorous, in the sense of never expressing an idea that one has not approached from various angles and interrogated to the best of one’s ability; and principled, in the sense of maintaining one’s commitment to an ideal even when it makes one appear ridiculous. And nowhere in either of these definitions are jokes even mentioned, let alone prohibited!
A further question remains (to be answered, at least, for no one has ever asked it): what is the true nature of my Devotion to Literature? How can I claim to take the work seriously, to call it the essence of my life, when I apply myself to it in such a haphazard and undisciplined fashion? Surely, devotion implies self-sacrifice — “a life devoted to literature” would be a life lived for the sake of literature.
But my case is quite the opposite. I do not consider literature an end in itself; instead, I understand literature as a tool. Literature is a particular means of self-expression, and self-expression is, in the end, communication. Literature is a way of making my life tangible; it transforms this confused collection of experiences into a readable format. Literature, then, is a byproduct of living. I essentially can not help but produce it, for the format of the written word has become the format of my thoughts. I can not think unless I am writing, whether that is sitting at the keyboard and typing, or composing paragraphs in my head as I walk around.
For a long time, I believed that the only legitimate medium of literature was the novel. Poetry could be well and good, and non-fiction could be interesting, but one could not truly be considered a great writer unless one had composed a great novel. This is a common sentiment of the modern era. Ever since the novel initially rose to prominence in the 19th century, it has gradually superseded all other forms of literature. The novel, a thoroughly European form of storytelling, has become the standard by which countries across the globe assess their ability to produce “literature.” A country must have a great novelist, or it is not a “literary” country.
But aside from being a local medium, the novel is also a modern one. As recently as the early 19th century, both Coleridge and Byron lamented the fact that they were constrained to verse, since prose could not gain a popular readership. Poetry, drama, and opera were the order of the day, all formats that have become niche at best in the modern age. As one explores more deeply and more broadly, one comes to realize that “medium” or “format” are all merely contingent — a result of the particular time period the author lived in. To use some favourite examples mentioned in a previous essay, Jesus spoke in folksy parables; Kant spoke the language of German Scientific Philosophy; Plato wrote in dialogues, and Lao Tze wrote in paradoxical mystery-verses. They wrote in these formats because that was the way they organized their thoughts, in part because that was the way others around them organized their thoughts, and this was the most effective means of being understood. There’s no sense in saying that they all ought to have written in (modern) standard prose, or that our modern means of communication are more effective because they are (supposedly) more clear and direct.
All of these people can be said to have composed works of literature, (although they are more often categorized as philosophy)1, none of which even remotely resemble the modern novel. In fact, even the most revered novels, those Great Novels we love to speak of, rarely resemble the modern novel. The truly Great Novels each seem to exist as a genre of their own — Moby-Dick, In Search of Lost Time, War & Peace, Dream of Red Mansions, to name only a few, all contain remarkable structural idiosyncrasies that even a modern critic would call “revolutionary.” But they’re not revolutionizing the novel, nor were they trying to. The authors in question simply created the format that suited the work they were creating, sometimes accidentally but often on purpose. Tolstoy, for example, didn’t call War & Peace a novel, and Cao Xueqin had a character within the story itself remark on how little it resembled its contemporaries. But they didn’t say, “this is the new form of the literature;” instead, they said “this is this form of literature.” Tolstoy didn’t continue to use the philosophy-history-novel hybrid format of War & Peace for his later novels, because it wouldn’t have suited them.
I spend much more time writing these essays than I do writing fiction. In the past, this fact caused me great shame. I thought it meant that I was a lesser writer, content to waffle about in non-fiction rather than pursuing the higher road of novel-writing. It didn’t suit my self-image to realize that non-fiction came much more naturally to me, was more enjoyable, and even gave me greater satisfaction. I had aspired to be a Novelist, a Real Writer — someone who created grand Works! I wanted to emulate those writers I admired most, those who had created worlds within their own mind, worlds that I wanted to jump right into.
And I remain a novelist! At least, in part. I don’t want to seem as if I’m casting off my novel, Only In Dreams, a work that I consider my crowning achievement.2 And I do not wish to have you believe that my second novel, the title of which I am too weary at the moment to write in full, is simply something I am casually writing down as I would a grocery list. No, it comes so slowly and so gruelingly because it is important, and it is important, in part, because it comes so slowly and so gruelingly.
But it would be foolish of me to ignore the fact that this website and these essays are my primary medium. They are the vessel in which all the excess literature that courses through me finds its way out into the world. They are the way I respond to writers of the past, and communicate with readers of the present. They are perhaps the most accurate emanation of “me-hood” that can be translated to the written word.
So it only seems right that I should approach them with respect, with gravity, and with dignity! This website is me. It is the me that exists on the internet, as a website. And if I don’t take myself seriously, if I don’t try to live my life in a way that I consider good and true and just, then what am I doing on this dusty old planet?
If I while away my days writing on topics that will be forgotten in weeks and better understood in years, all I’ll be left with is a large pile of dead words. Words that, to be sure, lived their life to the fullest during their brief time, but which will be passed down to future generations as irrelevant relics, if they are passed down at all. Is there anyone today reading editions of The Spectator or The Mirror published circa 1809? Not one soul, aside from historians and academics. But if you were to ask the same question about Coleridge’s The Friend, published at the same time and appreciated by few, the answer would be “at least one person.”3 And is that not enough?
I recognize that eternity is a lofty and presumptuous goal, and furthermore, a goal whose achievement the writer himself will never glimpse. These essays may disappear as soon as I stop paying for their space on a server. That, my friends, is beyond my control. But what I can do is write them with as much care as any man ever wrote anything; and what I can further do, or at least aim to do, is imbue them with as much beauty, personality, and intellectual rigour as I am capable. For that is my only hope! Just as it is the only hope of anyone who entrusted their life to their words!
Can we call these essays literature? The better question is: can we in good conscience refuse to call them literature, merely because of the fact that they are published to a modest website and read by a modest handful of generous readers? The format is a mere historical contingency; as have all other writers throughout history, I am working with the tools and the language at my disposal. But as I have been told from a young age, and have come to recognize as far more profound than we often appreciate:
It’s the HEART that counts!
Related Essays:
1. Although to my mind, philosophy is itself a sub-genre of literature, not science.
2. Yes, I wear two crowns!
3. This mysterious man goes by the online persona Blakcwell.