message in a bottle 2009

i was reminded of this by a comment in an e-mail from a friend. i wrote it about 10 years ago but never posted it because i did not think i was getting my point across very clearly. i offer it here as a period piece and example of failed prophecy.

once... my life was a glorious feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed. - rimbaud , "a season in hell" "you are saved,... saved! what has cast such a shadow upon you?" - melville, "benito cereno" ---------- three or four years ago there seemed to be dramatic changes in the way books were presented and distributed, and the demise of the "book" itself seemed possible. for now, the changes do not seem to be nearly as great as expected. the e-book has established itself, but an e-book is still a book - you can obtain e-books of the novels of george eliot. i tried to think of the most unlikely book i could to be available on kindle and came up with macaulay's "history of england". it is available, apparently complete, in more than one edition. how about grote's history of greece? it is available too, but in what seems an abridged edition. anyway, you get the idea - "everything" is on kindle. and people still write, read, and buy books, e or paper. maybe more than ever. and still want to write and "publish" books. why? why not just put things online, on blogs and websites? obvious answer - so they can get paid for them. but i would think some people would be willing to give up on or forego payment - especially if they are producing things with little or no "commercial potential" anyway. and there are great positive advantages to putting works directly online - the complete freedom to do anything you want, bypassing all canons of taste, tradition or the marketplace, and being free from the judgments and whims of editors. and from the costs of reproduction. well, you say, you could always do that if you wanted - you could be like henry darger in his little room, writing and cutting and pasting* his books and piling them up in his closet. but with the web you have the illusion (at least) that somebody somewhere will stumble across what you have done and take a look at it. also what you make is not nearly as easily destroyed as if someone finds it in a closet or desk drawer and just tosses it out. i know there are writers who have put books online and later had them published, or who have developed followings on line and gone on to publish. and i know there are millions of online works of fan fiction and genre and romance novels. i am thinking of something a little different - of not only not trying to publish but of taking advantage of the possibilities of not having to go through editors or publishers. i would have thought that by now somebody or something would have made a mark by producing works online - works that could not be produced otherwise, or only otherwise at great expense. surely somebody must be out there trying - maybe a lot of people. maybe i am just not hip enough (oh no!) or not looking in the right places. but i don't think anybody doing it has become "famous" - not even for the proverbial fifteen minutes. none of this is intended as an argument or manifesto. any comments or feedback are welcome. * obviously it is a lot easier and faster now to "cut and paste" than to do it literally with scissors and glue. not to mention having billions of images and words at hand instead of having to go out into the "real world" and scrounge them up.