Beginnings are Overrated

Clearly. I've never really understood the exact role of blogging and I suppose that's because it doesn't have a particularly narrow one. I kept a regular blog through blogspot in college that was basically a space to rant. Before that I had a livejournal which was more or less a private diary that was somehow comfortably open to the public. As to what this is? Who knows.

Mostly this is a forum to write casually. Its a luxury I haven't had much in the past four years or so. My graduate program keeps me on my toes for formal writing. I'm limited by my subject matter (English) and my areas of expertise (Victorian and Gothic 19th century literature) and my academic interests (the Gothic valence of children). I suppose this blog is a liberation from that.

Don't get me wrong, I love Academia. In many ways, I prefer the formal writing to the casual: I like speaking from a place of authority; I like contributing new ideas to a community rather than rehashing the arguments of others; most of all, I like the things I write formally about. But every once in a while I get the urge to break with formality and research and expertise in order to write thoughtfully and thoroughly from a place of speculation, relative ignorance and on subjects I know little about. I suppose, in that way, this is a pretty standard blog.

But I guess its appropriate to write about the title and theme of the blog in a first entry, not that this blog has a particular theme. Harold Skimpole, in my estimation, is the greatest villain in literary history. In Dickens' novel Bleak House, he's a grown man, masquerading as an eternal child and banking off of his wit and feigned innocence to charm his way into the pockets of many innocent philanthropists. The quote that serves as my header refers to his perverse justification of his notions of charity. By being a charity case, he allows those with generous hearts an object on which to lavish their gifts.

I'm not into mooching, per se (though the budget of a grad student does make the lifestyle tempting), but I am into the perversity of his inversions. He manages to deftly reverse expectations and remain the beneficiary of his friend's naive charity with nothing more than the suggestion that his poverty isn't a state but a service.

I love low culture. Through Skimpole I see a world in which the base becomes exalted and worthy of our attention: a world where trashy TV is the window to our psyche, where fast food becomes a kind of postmodern art and where I can ramble about both with some semblance of insight. This blog is my informal, uninformed and formulaic attempt at perversely reveling in my cultural bottom-feeding. Its a blog of gilded refuse.

So please, don't show me any vulgar gratitude. I rather think you ought to be thanking me.