Term Paper

RICHARD PRYOR AND SPEAKING THE TRUTH
On The Purpose and Voice of Personal Blogs
By Peter Laszlo


Who was Richard Pryor? I’m just wondering, because I have read he died of a heart attack at the age of 65 on Saturday in the early morning, that is how I learnt of the fact that he ever lived. It turns out I should have at least heard about him, since as the online paper writes, “he was one of the most influential American comedians of the seventies and eighties.” I read that he had a terrible childhood: he was born into miserable poverty, his mother was a prostitute in a brothel run by his grandmother, he was raped by a pedophile at the age of six, was dispelled from school at 14, and his first child was born when he was only 16. He led his life in a self-destructive manner. It seems he never got over the ordeals of his youth. His friend said, “Richard’s problems arose from his childhood. Inside him there was a terrible emptiness, which couldn’t be filled even by his fame and success.”

This quote is from him: “Lying is blasphemy. Lying is the most terrible thing in the world. Art is our capability to speak the truth, especially about ourselves.” He lived according to this principle all his life. He is described as a groundbreaking comedian whose profanely personal insights into race relations and modern life made him one of Hollywood's biggest black stars. He gained a wide following for his universal and frequently personal routines. After nearly losing his life in 1980 when he set himself on fire during a cocaine trip, he included the ordeal in his later routine. "By expressing his heart, anger and joy, Richard Pryor took comedy to its highest form," Steve Martin said.

I took a class this semester entitled Comedy and Clowns, and the one thing I learnt very well is that it is nearly impossible to be funny on stage without being honest and open about ourselves. The same principle, again. We were doing improv scenes each class and our most hilarious scenes were the ones where we did not struggle to be funny, but simply let ourselves “go with the flow” and be our own frail and fallible selves. I believe this principle must be true of writing blogs, as well.
I have just recently come to the conclusion that the best blogs I have seen were the ones that went the furthest in sincerity, the ones that dared to cast off any traces of pretentiousness. It is a puzzling phenomenon, though, since in blogging there is no easy way of hiding behind a persona, as opposed to stand-up comedy, poetry or an autobiographical novel. The blog’s authorial ‘I’ means the real person behind the blogger. No matter how much he chooses to reveal of him/herself, he identifies himself with his narrator. In addition, there are the other (also real life) ‘characters’ of the blog, speaking of whom the author has to restrain themselves, since not anything can be revealed of them, or at least not more than would be possible in real life. Of course, there are the autobiographies, sometimes painfully honest and hurtful with respect to the author or the audience, but blogging happens real-time, it embraces the self not in a retrospective way, but in an ongoing process, day by day, which is more difficult. Sincerity is a dangerous game; it can’t be played too high stakes.

My question is: if we accept that “Art is our capability to speak the truth, especially about ourselves”, is it then possible to do art through writing a blog, which in lack of a persona, unlike a stand-up comedy piece, a poem or a novel, will most likely never say everything or in the way it wants. Or am I wrong in assuming there is no total honesty in blogging? Maybe there is, only it takes a mature personality who is accepting themselves wholly. Or an anonymous one.
I, personally, have chosen to go for the non-anonymous type of blog when I set off this September. I posted photos of myself so anyone can figure out who I am. I have come across certain blogs that left me in awe and feeling a deep longing that one day I might be able to write something that powerful, funny or touching as those posts that I read. It is my conviction that these posts were instances of art.

Is the sincerity of expressing one’s unique personality in blogs really the same sort of exhibitionism as the one witnessed in reality TV shows? I have always been horrified to imagine myself in the place of these reality shooting stars. I would never throw myself at the hands of the lions, the viewers, without any armor, even if I was paid for it like a Hollywood movie star. How can someone let millions of voyeurs stick their noses into every aspect of their lives? Now, publicizing my life in a blog I feel like I have compromised my earlier disapproving feelings about publicity. I am letting my readers into my thoughts and feelings, not innermost, but still pretty private thoughts previously reserved for my friends. I am still trying to figure out what actually I am doing this for.

I have always found reality TV’s obscene, it is just not the right way to show up oneself. The same way, I have long had the feeling that one may feel powerful and beautiful emotions, but when it is put into writing it sometimes becomes ridiculous, obscene or vulgar. It takes art to translate those emotions into writing, and it is a talent that not everyone possesses. I knew that I did not want to make my stuff obscene.

Starting it off was a full-day struggle of me staring blankly at the screen for long hours, finally posting the first post, then deleting it immediately, since I realized I just continued my paper journal online, a very bad idea. I did not want to represent myself with all my darkest thoughts when writing to an audience. I decided I was going to write something that was worth reading by an audience, and my paper journal was just a big mess, meaningful only to me. I gave myself a break and started writing an email to a friend, with whom we share a dark sense of humor, often lamenting about being losers and the impending dropping of the A-bomb. It was then I figured out I could copypaste the whole email and make it my first post, since this was the style I wanted to use in writing my new blog. I did not so much wish to show up myself in all my complexity as I wanted to be funny, to entertain. However, as I suggested above, being funny assumes honesty, and slowly I started to drift toward being increasingly open about myself in the often cynical remarks I made about my first encounters with American college life and my stumbling through the first months of feeling an alien here. I am still in the process of discovering what blogging has to give me, trying out different modes and materials for writing, but it is starting to feel more and more fulfilling to be able to write honestly. I feel a freer man.

Blogging has a certain sense of intimacy to it. Although, I am more aware of my audience when I write, thanks to the services of Sitemeter.com, I can still surrender myself to the illusion that it is only a lone reader who reads me, so this one-on-one basis means it is only one person who reads me, and this allows for a more intimate relationship with him/her, I imagine, letting me speak more openly. As I am getting more and more comfortable with having a public self, I am more confident in assuming that my reader is benevolent and not hostile to my writing, and to myself.

I have said public self, yes, probably I have a blogger persona or self, not like I postulated in the beginning. In a sense we all wear a mask in public, why would blogging be different? I tried to establish a humorous persona in the beginning. However, I am moving away from my original persona/voice that I assumed at the start (and perhaps I am becoming more “myself”?). Keeping that pervasive humorous persona could have kept me from being vulnerable to any possible attacks. Referring to Richard Pryor again, “he was able to turn pain into comedy, he let the world see it, and that was his inspiration, too”, as his wife said. I believe I did something similar, but at one point I also started to write posts in which I could not laugh at myself, and I sounded miserable. I made myself vulnerable. I thought. But I am coming to see that such an openness, independent of the fact whether I have a comic take on it or not, also makes me less vulnerable. In putting these things out I am starting to learn to make friends with myself, to accept myself. Maybe it is also my readers who help me in this: a small readership, but they keep coming back, which bears the message to me: they accept me.

Writing for this audience makes a world of a difference. Let me quote Coffeerhetoric here, one of the online journalers we had the pleasure to meet in person in our class. Blog journaling is liberating to her, too, "like taking a massive shit. You feel a sense of relief,” she says. But can’t that all be gotten rid of in a private journal? I think no, because having an audience listen to what you have to say is different. Writing for an audience your prime purpose is to entertain, to give them something worthy of reading. After having established a stable circle of readers, she suggests that she wants to entertain herself and her readers, “Firstly, I must oblige by thanking the core group of people who read my blog semi-regularly. I started blogging not because I wanted 30 or more comments on my page, but because, it is a way for me to just write when I hit a creative writing snag. I was told by a writing professor that the best way to get through writer's block is to write. Initially, I would just write in your standard private journal, but in going back and reading some of the things I wrote, some of the people and sets of circumstances I encountered, I would snicker... actually wanting to share some of my dirty laundry.” She clearly takes her blog as a literary experiment: "This is one of the literary forms that I enjoy partaking in the most."

I believe one of the reasons blog journallers appreciate having an audience, is because an audience enables them to break out from isolation, feel accepted and perhaps feel that their lives are seen as interesting and worthwhile. Having no one ever read and comment on your blog, on your life, you are a failure as a blogger. You are writing for others to read it. Coffeerhetoric confides that "while my goal is not to be the most popular blogger- and I am thrilled that people have actually discovered it and have left their feedback- I have stumbled upon this great community of like-minds, and you all have been gracious enough to show interest in the trials, travails, and tribulations known as my life. Thanks. I love your blogs in return.”

I am excited the same way about the possibility of interesting new people stumbling upon my blog. I have already met someone who first read about me, and then I read about her in her blog, and then she made contact with me, and we sort of started our relationship in medias res, with a much more honest and open attitude to each other, since we felt we already knew each other. The kind of “blind-dating” that is after all, not all that blind. I’m pondering, may blogs be the 21th century tool of fighting alienation for some of us?

The audience of a blogger is no different from the audience of a comedian. As I mentioned above, a great rule I was taught is “Don’t try to be funny,” which I figure is a special application of a general principle in life: “Don’t try desperately to please people”. If you are not funny, then you are not. If your mind blocks, and stand silent on stage for minutes, then you stand silent for minutes. So what? Same thing goes for keeping my blog: I try to constantly remind myself not to write in a way that I believe would be appealing to my current readership. It would be impossible anyways, since it is such a diverse readership encompassing family, friends, friends of friends, and random visitors, I cannot possibly please all of them . I have to write the way I write, and not the way they expect me to. I must not want so badly to “please people.” This is a real life lesson that blogging teaches me.

Richard Pryor once said, "It's so much easier for me to talk about my life in front of two thousand people than it is one-to-one. I'm a real defensive person, because if you were sensitive in my neighborhood you were something to eat." I feel the same way now about writing for the public. It is easier to say something true about myself through this medium, than to do that through personal interactions. And I decided that when I open my mouth to speak I want to speak the truth about myself. It is not easy most of the time, faking is such an all-pervading human activity, but I am trying to live up to Pryor’s principle. And I am glad that I have blogging to start off with this somewhere.


Blogs cited:

http://coffeerhetoric.blogspot.com
http://a-kisdobos.blogspot.com (my blog)

On Writing Style

http://www.sadlyno.com The author of Sadly No, who for the sake of convenience I will assume is a male, writes in a clever way. Actually, it's more his line of thinking than his style that is clever. He is someone who has a penchant for pointing out lies in the media, and he has a talent for sniffing out one. That seems to be the idea his whole blog is based on, the title of which serves as a recurring catchphrase and stands to mean: "Is that statement we heard true? Sadly, No!"

I like his July 4, 2003 post entitled "They're all liars -- all of them!" It's aimed at pointing out the false claim by Rush Limbaugh that Hillary Clinton was lying about how many copies of her book "Living History" have been sold in the first few days. He claims it takes around six months to know the approximate sales numbers, so at that point in time she could not have known the figures.

The author of Sadly No proves his point in a very elegant and poised way. He does not go on smudging Limbaugh's credibility or taunting him. He recalls or researches that Limbaugh published a book in 1993, and he goes after the facts: he finds out that he went on boasting about his unprecedented early sales just one month after the book had come out. Simply juxtaposing this fact with Limbaugh's present allegations is a powerful rhetoric. There's no mud slinging in his blog. He operates with facts - very clever facts. That's the trademark of his style.

Later on in his blog we also find more sarcastic and bluntly anti-Christian sounding posts, but what never changes is his placing himself in a position of infallibility to dispense what he believes to be the truth about allegations made by public figures.

CT Bloggers

I checked out Coffey0072 (http://www.coffeerhetoric.blogspot.com), one of our CT bloggers and found she is a really apt and eloquent writer, who mostly makes comments about her personal life, often her love life, and shares her musings about hooking up and relationships with her readers. Actually, many of these pieces seem quite lengthy for a blog. I could imagine her musings as articles in Cosmo, for example. Her vocabulary is very sophisticated, and she seems to occasionally write for some magazine, too.

She seems analytic about herself: "I am the quintessial shit talker and most of the time it's justified. I'm direct and I'm honest, but I'm also guarded and leery. She knows exactly what her blog will be like, and she's also quite confident about the value of her writing, perhaps less surprising if we consider that she has written for a longer time now, thus had time to develop her style and maybe get some feedback from friends: "I think now that I am ready to make the web masses privy what goes on in my head. All of it is worthwhile and thought provoking. Some of it might be a little profane and perverse. My mind run 'round and 'round liek a colorful mobius strip... none of the geometrical shapes ever really making any sense, but it's good shit nevertheless! ... Fasten your seatbelts. This voyage inside my head may be turbulent, but it will be funnier than hell!"

I figure it will always be the escribitionists, that is the online diarists whose blogs I will enjoy reading most. I've been keeping mine for a month now, and just began wondering why I am really doing it and what I want to get out of it. That's why I took interest in reading what Coffey0072 has to say about her motives. She explains her drive in a lengthy explanation that is to start off her blog.

She's journaled extensively for some time writing about "people I hate, people who get on my nerves, how much sex I'd like to be having, crazy dreams I've had, etc etc." I am surprised that what she writes in her blog is kind of the same. I imagine people keep a personal diary to keep track either of their everyday lives or their spiritual lives. Her blog is neither, she wants to entertain herself and now her readers, and she seems to take it as a literary experiment: "This is one of the literary forms that I enjoy partaking in the most." But also, blog journaling is liberating to her, "like taking a massive shit. You feel a sense of relief  ... Journaling allows you to expend that feeling.... the anger, the lust, the happiness, the joy etc etc. You can fucking trash people without having to deal with the drama you'd be bothered with, if you were to curse someone to their face."

But can't that all be gotten rid of in a private journal? I think no, because having an audience listen to what she has to say is different. Writing for an audience your prime purpose is to entertain, to give something valuable to them. Almost one year later, having an established circle of readers, she suggests the importance of sharing and having an audience: Firstly, I must oblige by thanking the core group of people who read my blog semi-regularly. I started blogging not because I wanted 30 or more comments on my page, but because, it is a way for me to just write when I hit a creative writing snag. I was told by a writing professor that the best way to get through writer's block is to write. Initially, I would just write in your standard private journal, but in going back and reading some of the things I wrote, some of the people and sets of circumstances I encountered, I would snicker... actually wanting to share some of my dirty laundry

I believe blog journallers appreciate having an audience, because they enable them to break out from isolation, and transform their life to be viewed as interesting through an act of publishing it. Having no one ever read and comment on your blog, on your life, you're a failure as a blogger. Maybe I'm taking this too far, but I sometimes think that an online diarist needs a faithful, interested audience to help them believe their life is worthwhile and unique, they need people who care about them. Coffey0072 confides that: "... while my goal is not to be the most popular blogger- and I am thrilled that people have actually discovered it and have left their feedback- I have stumbled upon this great community of like-minds, and you all have been gracious enough to show interest in the trials, travails, and tribulations known as my life. Thanks. I love your blogs in return. May blogs be the 21th century tool of fighting alienation for some?

Pros-turned-bloggers

James Wolcott was "a columnist on media and pop culture for publications such as Esquire, Harper's, and New York magazine", and is presently a Vanity Fair contributing editor [http://jameswolcott.com]. He turned a blogger in September 2004, with an in medias res start - making no overt references to clarify why he starts this blog, what his purpose is or who he thinks his audience might be. His opening post on September 2, 2004 centers around Zell Miller's speech to the Republican National Convention the previous night. It's as if he was suggesting that: "I am an acknowledged, widely recognized commentator of American politics and public life, and I doubt that there is anyone in this country as naive as to believe I would write about anything else but what I always write about."

There is hardly any trace of personal sidecomments about his life or meta-musings about his newly found medium and his writing. Wolcott's blog is not a fan site, but rather remains strictly within the domain of journalistic commentary. I have the hunch that he does not consider this new medium a source to refreshen his own writing, but simply an eighth tentacle to reach out to the avid readers of his columns in the print media. "Anyone needs more of me? Go online and read my blog!" His opionion posts look disorganized, which further confirms my impression that it is meant to be an extension of his columns, for readers who are already familar with the backgrounds of events, and are just looking for additional opinions.

In closing, let me just say that it was quite difficult for me to understand what he is writing about in his blog. Jane Hamsher, Peter Fitzgerald, Scooter, Rover Boy, Diana Ross, Bill Bennett, John McWhorter, Robert George, Plamegate, Lauren Bacall, John Derbyshire, Karen Hughes etc. - just to mention a couple of names who I have no idea about since coming from Hungary I am totally unfamiliar with American politics. It is difficult for me to read the NY Times as well, but not impossible because there I get the background information I need to comrehend the cultural references in the column. But Wolcott's blog is so dense with references that beyond an overall grasp of his style and content it remained largely inaccessible to me.

Blog tutorial

blog - shorter version for 'weblog'

origin
The term "weblog" may have been coined by Jorn Barger in December 1997.

Before blogging became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, email lists and bulletin boards. In the 1990s Internet forum software, such as WebX, created running conversations with threads.

Thread - consecutive messages on one specific topic of discussion

The site Open Diary, while not using the term blog until recently, launched in 1998, had over 2000 diaries by 1999, and near 400 000 as of september 2005.

Blogging is now enough of a phenomenon that established schools of journalism began researching the blogging phenomenon, and noting the differences between current practice of journalism and blogging.

Since 2003, weblogs have gained increasing notice and coverage for their role in breaking, shaping, or spinning news stories.

Blogs are a news source. The use of blogs by established politicians and political candidates—particularly Howard Dean and Wesley Clark — to express opinions on the war and other issues of the day - cemented blogs in this role. Blogs also arose amongst soldiers serving in the Iraq war. Such "milblogs" have given readers a new perspective on the realities of war. Reading the thoughts of people who were "on the spot" provided a supplement and perhaps a differing viewpoint to official news sources.

In 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as political consultants, news services and candidates began using them as tools for outreach and opinion formation. Anthologies of blog pieces began to reach print, and blogging personalities began appearing on radio and television.

An escribitionist is a person who keeps a diary or journal via electronic means, and in particular, publishes their entries on the web. The word was coined in June 1999 by Erin Venema, an online diarist, in the course of a discussion on a mailing list for web journalers. The word comes from a combination of the English word "exhibitionist" and the Spanish word "escribir," meaning "to write." Coined before the widespread use of weblogs, the word escribitionist is often used to distinguish diary keepers on the web from weblog authors, whose writing often involve far more diverse styles, perspectives and subjects than those used in personal journals. While a weblog author may engage in journaling, or reporting, or political commentary, an escribitionist is focused on personal experiences and reflection.

Source: Wikipedia.org