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Sunday, May 15, 2005

Out of my brain on the 5-15

It’s about time for a blogging hiatus. This humid blog has taken a couple of sabbaticals in the past—one last summer, for a two-week vacation, and then a three-week hiatus after the November election, during which I posted only once a week while I was being re-educated at Focus on the Family Ministries in Colorado Springs.  Since then, I’ve been blogging away for five and a half months; I’ve crossed the million-reader mark (something I would never have dreamed of in a million reader-years), and I managed three honorable mentions in the 2004 Koufax Awards (more things of which I would not have dreamed in a million reader-years), which surely boosted my readership into the upper reaches of the blogosphere’s troposphere.  (I think that’s the correct osphere.) Last but not least, since November 3 this blog has garnered well over four thousand comments (yes, I went back and counted ‘em all—now we know how many comments it takes to fill the Albert Hall), and the amazing thing is, all of them have been funny.  Thanks, folks.

I feel like I have end-of-semester exhaustion, even though I didn’t teach this semester (don’t tell David Horowitz!), and just over a week ago I figured out why.  All this time I’ve been blogging and blogstanding and blogtending, I also wrote three talks, three academic essays, and one newspaper opinion piece, while editing a special issue of a journal, turning in the long-overdue first draft of Liberal Arts, and finishing up work on a bunch of other things as well.  I don’t think I’ve ever done so much writing in a six-month span.  And it turns out that my long-overdue first draft needs a whole lot of work, and you know what that means—more writing.  Honestly, I’ve just gotten sick and tired of reading my own prose.  If you’ve sensed a certain lack of snap, crackle, or pop in recent posts, well, that’s why.  A friend recently remarked to me that when Janet guest-posted here two weeks ago, it was a “breath of fresh air” on the blog.  “Mm, m’fren’,” I replied.  “For you and me both.”

But I don’t want the poor blog to hibernate for weeks at a time, and I don’t want to jerk around my regular readers.  So, then, here’s the plan.  John McGowan has kindly agreed to step in from May 17 through the first week of June.  John teaches literature and literary theory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where (as you’re probably aware) they’re working overtime to establish leftist hegemony throughout the Tar Heel state from the mountains to the sea, and I think he’s one of the best in the business.  His most recent book is Democracy’s Children: Intellectuals and the Rise of Cultural Politics, which I recommend highly.  Please give him a warm welcome, and I’ll see you all next month.

Posted by Michael on 05/15 at 09:27 PM
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