`A Method Rather Than a Form'

Frank Wilson has a new weekly column, "That’s What He Said," at When Falls the Coliseum. He starts, appropriately, with a look at the first blogger, Michel de Montaigne:

"Montaigne [...] doesn’t seem to have arrived at any conclusion before he began to write. The point of his writing wasn’t to advance a position, but to record a process of thought. This is writing as an act, first and foremost, of self-examination, not self-expression (though it is that as well, of course). I have long thought a great opportunity has been missed in the failure to explore the essay as a method rather than a form."