Ralph-ing

Bloggers and others writers can learn much from Emerson’s journal, surely a proto-blog. His style, at first, can grate and disorient. An Emerson paragraph—in the journal and in published work – often consists of sentences with seemingly little sequential logic. At times, his thought appears to restart with each sentence. At its best, his prose is spontaneous, lapidary, an interactive map of his mind. The following passage dates from 1862—the second year of the Civil War, the year his difficult friend Thoreau died:

“The art of the writer is to speak his fact & have done. Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing, because you have omitted every word that he can spare. You are annoyed – are you? – that your fine friends do not read you: they are better friends than you knew, & have done you the rarest service. Now write so that they must. When it is a disgrace to them that they do not know what you have said, you will hear the echo.”

Write so your friends must read you: Brave, audacious, common-sensical advice from Emerson, who always surprises with the extremity of his wisdom. He is judged a Yankee fuddy-duddy, yet he says nothing about pleasing your friends. Rather, compel them. His followers – Thoreau, Whitman – have for so long eclipsed him in accomplishment (he wrote nothing to rival Walden or Leaves of Grass), but both acknowledged his inspiration, and we ought to heed him, with caution, as they did.