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Sunday, March 28, 2004

plasticbag.org | weblog | On Belle de Jour...

Over at the plasticbag blog - pretty fantastic for all things blog - they've been discussing the Belle phenomenon for the past week (haven't we all!) and I noticed today that Franz has said (March 20, 2004 04:26 PM):

"I don't think anyone is really shocked and startled as you said, but just curious. Belle's blog - in case it's not just fiction - allows people to relate to a hooker on a different level through short stories and musings, and there's no need to read a whole Houellebecq."

So if Atomised is beyond you or you can't stretch to get hold of a copy from your work station you know where to go instead.

I have just posted a comment at plasticbag.org on the end of the discussion and thought I'd put up here too:

"A great discussion - with virtually all sides of the current debate regarding the BjD phenomenon expressed. I'm not sure if Tom Coates and yeahright are really disagreeing too much about what they recognise as Belle's achievement - you both seem to have more in common than you may think. What is it with this hostility towards media types and their lifestyles? Explain yourself coherently or get over it!

I'm surprised that people are still getting sidetracked by the identity issue, and concerning themselves with the degree to which it affects the quality or honesty of any author's writing - surely all storytelling is a construct - whether it represents itself as fiction, news journalism, commentary, political speech making, UN resolutions or judicial reports on the machinations of government. Haven't we all accepted that by now. Surely we all gather information from the environment we inhabit and choose to convey it in the way we see as being appropriate to our medium, audience and ends.

At the receiving end surely the process of interpretation is the same in reverse. Who are we when we read or hear something? Are we the same person all of the time? And do we truly know who we are? It is all constructs being deconstructed and reconstructed in different contexts over and over again.

(By the way I am not the nick who posted the Foucault link - and I wonder just why "literary anonymity is not tolerable"? Its not a zero-sum game - after all, who was William Sakespeare, really? And why is it so important when the words are the message?)

Regarding whether Belle is worth the Blog she's written on - its merely a case of personal judgement - either you get something from it, for good or bad, and choose whether or not to carry on reading as a result. That's the case with all written words and stories - you care or you don't.

Regarding the commercialism of Belle. Its unfortunate that the manufacture and purchase of a thong or a t-shirt, a book or a film, to signify an association or convey a message conjures pejorative reaction - but how on earth do ideas disseminate wholly outside of the pecuniary marketplace whilst there is still a material world out there beyond the free exchanges of the net that we are now so familiar with?

Regarding Belle being the latest in a long line of a particular genre: is there any singularly unique new genre out there that I haven't heard about yet? Surely a writer's challenge is to be conscious of the genre/tradition in which they write and to extend it knowingly. Is Belle guilty of failing to do this any more than say virtually any published author in the world today?

I don't mind admitting that I enjoy Belle's writing for what I take it to be - which is lots of different things that change over time - but on balance I continue to read. And that is the only measure by which I can honestly judge anyone's story - no matter who they are, or why they tell it.

Finally, does anyone know Lisa Hilton? And has she made any public or private statements regarding whether or not she has a blogger account responsible for http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/?

If I'm missing the point - please rattle my cage."

Posted by Nick @ 09:56 GMT

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