Laddy Carbury, just a 19th century blogger?

After spending just a little time "researching" blogging in order to bring the Brookside Blog up to "industry standards" I've come to believe Lady Carbury was way ahead of her time. She was a blogger.

Her book "Criminal Queens" is lightly researched. It is written for mass, uncritical readers. When she asks for professional "editorial criticism" it is from her favorite collection of London's writers/editors. There's lots of professional payback going on. If you review my book and say nice things, I'll review your book and say nice things.

She would have loved Facebook.

Lady Carbury also likes to combine/confuse her social life with her professional literary contacts.

The introduction to my copy of The Way We Live Now explains that the main plot for the book was going to be exposing and satirizing the London literay scene. Perhaps Mr Trollope wasn't good at smoozing with other writer/editors. He just wasn't getting the good reviews he thought he deserved.

I'm certainly glad he decided to add the Mexican train swindle plot to the story otherwise it would have been The Way Some of Us Who Write Novels Live Now. Lacks punch...

Not sure if this blog will ever be up to "standard". It's more of a rant than a blog.

Next: Melmotte, the big wonderful, tragic "hero"??

Search engine tags: Blogging history: 19th Century Bloggers: Anthony Trollope: Lady Carbury, pioneer blogger

the game's the thing

Choosing to read The Way We Live Now while fresh from The Big Short was a fortunate decision.

Trollope's Mexico railroad scandel is a lot less complicated than our recent financial meltdown but the fundamentals are the same. Greed.

"Men reconcile themselves to swindling. Though they themselves mean to be honest, dishonesty of itself is no longer odious to them. Then there comes the jealousy that others should be growing rich with the approval of all the world - and the natural aptitude to do what all the world approves."

There was not much romance in the Big Short. TWWLN is like one very long Jane Austen marriage marketplace but with "teeth". The ladies are only out for a husband who will provide the house in London and financial security. For some love is not a priority, more a luxury.

I want a mood organ...

Phili K. Dick comes up with some great creations in this book.

I love the mood organ. In the morning it wakes you and gives you the attitude you need to get that day going.

"If you set the surge up high enough, you'll be glad you're awake."

Don't we all need one of these?

Then there's kipple.

"Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders...When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself."

The empathy box and Wilbur Mercer.

The surviving humans on earth need a way to commune with each other so they use an empathy box. By holding the handles and watching the video of Wilbur Mercer climbing his hill in the wilderness Isidore merges with the old man and others watching him on his climb. The experience includes bleeding when stones are thrown and cut Mercer's arm. Not sure how this is achieved.

"He had crossed in the usual perplexing fashion; physical merging-accompanied by mental and spitual identification - with Wilbur Mercer had reocurred. As it did for everyone who at this moment clutched the handles, either here on earth or on one of the colony planets. He experienced them, the others, incorporated the babble of their thoughts, heard in his own brain the noise of many individual existences. They- and he -cared about one thing; this fusion of their mentalities oriented their attention on the hill, the climb, the need to ascend".

Climbing the hill to the Stanford Dish will never be the same for me again. I'll be looking for Wilbur Mercer.