Six Degrees #1

The first part of a new weekly feature, coming to you each and every Monday Tuesday Wednesday (probably). Whether the idea is going to work or not I have no idea – but am always open to suggestions for improvements.

The aim? To explore the land of blogs and their near brethren, six at a time, opening up new areas of this here interwebnet for your delectation. Starting from my own place and taking the blog most removed in subject matter from my own on my blogroll, I intend to follow links and see just how far I can travel around blogland from Anglo-European politics, hopefully discovering all kinds of interesting new places along the way.

The only criterion? Other than the very first entry, these must all be sites about which I was previously unaware before starting this online journey. It is, if you like, the internet equivalent of sticking a pin in a world map to decide on your holiday destination. A kind of cyber travel writing. A kind of blog roundup/carnival, but with no overarching theme and where those featured would by definition have discounted themselves had they tried to ask to be included.

Today, from European politics (my place) to Japanese paper lanterns – by way of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, epistemological psychology, catblogging and Edward Lear…

1) First up is the wonderfully eclectic artblog Giornale Nuovo, although that clichéd description cannot help but fail to do it justice. An exploration of the fantastic, the bizarre and the obscure in the world of art, from the early modern pre-surrealist surrealism of the relatively well-known Pieter Brueghel the Elder to the eighteenth century fraudster Psalmanazar‘s Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, Max Ernst’s late 1950s “blue period” to the late 19th/early 20th century woodcuts of Félix Vallotton to playing cards from Imperial Russia, almost every entry is accompanied by glorious images of the topic at hand – many of which can be downloaded at surprisingly high resolution to be studied in closer detail. Running since October 2002, normally with an update or two a week, the combination of a wealth of information and reproductions of often highly obscure, yet always intriguing illustrations makes this one of my favourite non-political sites on the net. (And while you’re there, why not check out the same blogger’s side-project, a transcription of Isaac D’Israeli’s always distracting Curiosities of Literature?)

2) From the blogroll there comes Pseudopodium, a blog which seems to focus on a broad range of the arts, notably literature and film, but also delving into philosophy and – occasionally – a bit of politics. The current series of essays on Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, placing it in its historical and political context only to dismiss these as useful routes to the study of literature, make for fairly interesting reading (at least for someone who didn’t do Eng Lit beyond A-Level but who studied the politics of Marlowe’s age to postgrad), while the extensive topic archives (the blog has been running since 1999) promise a broad range of well-written and thoughtful observations on subjects as diverse as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. One to explore further.

3) And then on to The Valve, an online literary magazine/group blog where Pseudopodium’s author ocassionally cross-posts which was seemingly founded in March this year. Seemingly a Sharpener (or, more accurately, a Crooked Timber, especially as there are personnel in common) for book buffs, they’ve got one up on us not only by having regular posts, but also a sponsor in the shape of Boston University’s Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. As you’d likely expect from that, and from the fact that most of the contributors are either university lecturers or PhD students, it’s largely weighty intellectual literary criticism – phrases like “I wanted quotes to illustrate aberrant epistemological psychology” cropping up all over the shop – it’s probably all a bit much for a morning, but for anyone with a penchant for lit crit you could do far, far worse.

4) From academia to catblogging – and some academia, courtesy of Sorrow at Sills Bend, a Melbourne-based blog in the more traditional sense from one of The Valve’s contributors (who I clicked on largely because she seems to be doing a PhD on novel to film adaptation, a subject I did a book on not too long ago). The major reason for inclusion is for managing to make Australia seem culturally and historically interesting – and here was me thinking it was all Clive James, Rolf Harris and Steve Irwin… Poke around the archives and get a bunch of screenshots of A Hard Day’s Night, which can never be bad, cats reading books, and a healthy line in self-deprecation.

5) Now a bit of Edward Lear catches my eye, and it’s over to Runcible Spoon for a dose of existential angst, surrealist maps of the world, sensible advice on reading while walking (something I do far too often) and photos of Japanese oddness perfectly designed to get me in the mood for my trip out there in a fortnight’s time. Fun, seemingly utterly unconnected stuff, but all good – old-school blogging on top form.

6) And from one lot of Japanese photographs to some more, courtesy of Tokyo-based Antipixel. These lanterns I have fond memories of from my trip out there last spring – and am beginning to regret starting to learn Japanese and have their inherent beauty destroyed by beginning to be able to read precisely what they’re advertising, while this view of the Chrysler Building from the Empire State for some reason summoned up all kinds of good memories, even though I’ve never been to New York… Probably Woody Allen films or something. There’s also a good number of Japan-related links in the blogroll, so a promising starting point for next time.