Mail From Tunis: a season in the blogosphere

This is a book of bits. Many forms of writing have been developed over the centuries, each presenting its matter in a different light. An epic is not a lyric. A sonnet is not a screenplay. Blank verse drama is not mistaken for the novel. But though these moulds may seem fixed yet their frontiers are fluid. Remember how New Journalism (as it was dubbed) brought the methods of fiction to factual reporting. Think how the emergent Twitter shares a border of brevity with the haiku. Though Montaigne may be acknowledged as the godfather of the formal essay, it is unlikely that anyone will be so crowned as the inventor of the blog - because simply there is no fixed model. Blogs are entirely what their authors make of them. They do not submit to a rule of 140 characters. The subject matter can slot into defined categories or be freewheeling and fancy free. The length of a post can vary from single sentences to pages. The particular nature of the blog is that it is not one single piece but rather a series of posts. And they are as much a journey of discovery for the author as for the reader. These (160 odd) posts were recorded over a two year period. Too soon to tell but maybe they show - of the form itself - that some things can be new under the sun. Here is a book of bits.