If I may interject for a moment…

Blogging is one form of self-expression.  A novel is another form of expression.

There are three reasons I see that publishing sections of a novel  on a blog never seems to quite work right..

1)      The sequence is whacked. Subsequent chapters of the novel are always at the blog’s ‘beginning’.  And the beginning of the novel gets lost in the blog archives.  There are, of course, adjustments that can be contrived to guide the reader back to the start.  But such go against the in-the-moment momentum that underlies all blogging.

2)      The novel form is seldom interactive; it seldom reaches out to actively involve the reader.  On the other hand, the spirit of open blogging is precisely interactivity.  Bringing the two together creates an aura of schizophrenia for the reader.  Ever known a dog that kind-of wants to bark but doesn’t really let it all out?  You know, starts the bark and then swallows it?  Such is typical of middle-age dogs suffering a prolonged adolescence wherein their mindset is “I want to bark.  I don’t want to bark.  I want to bark.  I don’t want  to bark. Etc….”  Similarly, I believe that readers of chapters of novels that have been pigeonholed onto a blog react:  "I want to interact.  I don’t want to interact.  Etc…"

3)      The novel is parasitical by nature.  To the degree that it is successful in capturing attention, it creates an expectation.  And to the degree that it creates an expectation, it requires that the blog become devoted to it.  Before you know, your swimming pool is filled with hungry piranha, toadstools are growing in your lawn, and the sheer weight of barnacles is causing your skiff to ride lower in the water.

Remarks upon an entirely different matter altogether…

On the way to work this morning, I came up with what I believe is a novel idea for the rebuilding of New Orleans.  I may be wrong.  Perhaps the idea is already being considered, discussed.  But if not, I believe it deserves consideration.  And it is this:

The problem with flooding in New Orleans is that it lies below sea level and the sea (river, lake, gulf) is all around.  An additional problem now is removing all the wreckage in order to start building anew.  One starts out thinking that perhaps the whole city should just be filled in to bring it above sea level.  But that is way beyond practical—it would make more sense to just abandon the site and start somewhere else.

But why not process the wreckage into such a form that we could deposit it at the center of, say, every 3 square mile tract of land in New Orleans in order to build islands that rise above sea level and upon which hurricane-resistant emergency shelters and/or other public works can be built and serve as emergency refuge?  So all of New Orleans would be dotted with predictable hills rising above the majority of land still lying below.  Of course, additional landfill would need to be brought in to add to the processed wreckage in order to make the hill high enough to rise above flood waters.  And, of course, the government would also need to reclaim such land from other use for this purpose and that might cause some additional dislocation/relocation problems.   Yet the end result would be that every neighborhood would have its hill.   “Going to the hill” (from which you could still see your house below) would become a viable option for those who would be, for one reason or another, unable or unwilling to evacuate the city in a time of hurricane/flood crisis.

How much will it cost?  How much fill will have to be hauled in to augment the processed wreckage?  How to decide  what land to reclaim for this use?  I’ll leave such mundane matters to my detractors who, no doubt (knowing doubt!), will begin to throw dirt atop this proposal.