The most exciting thing that’s happened on my blog in weeks

A couple of weeks ago, after I’d finally gotten around to reading The Catcher in the Rye, I sat down and rattled off this post. It was an admittedly hamfisted take on Salinger’s writing style, and it probably would have gone unnoticed if a perfect stranger hadn’t stumbled across it last week and gotten surprisingly pissed off.

The ensuing conversation, which you can read in the comment section of the post, began when the stranger in question told me he loved it when “novice scribes” with a “dangerously bloated ego” like me “take a shitty joke… and beat it to the ground with all the subtlety of [a] stampeding rhinoceros.” Frankly, I don’t assume anyone beyond a few friends and family members knows this site exists, so you can imagine my surprise when someone new shows up and flies into an impotent rage at my audacity.

At first, I couldn’t even tell why he was so angry. The joke was pretty lame, I’ll grant you that, but it wasn’t offensive. Confused, I did what anyone would have done in that situation: I jumped on Twitter and told people that “I wrote a really hacky rant that ruined some stranger’s day.” After that, a few friends – or sycophants, as the commenter called them when he came back today – showed up to wonder aloud what the guy’s problem was.

You can read the whole thing via the link above, so I won’t go into detail. To sum it up, the guy felt it was vain and self-important of me to have a blog at all. I could see where he was coming from, but nonetheless I disagreed and reminded him that he was under no obligation to read my blog or anyone else’s. I also pointed out that posting a comment on someone’s blog might not be the best way to argue that people on the web should keep their unsolicited opinions to themselves, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyway, the whole thing ended peaceably. I just hope it stays that way when he finds out that my friend Kate Carraway of Eye Weekly was kind enough to include the post in her Required Reading column today. As it was, his rant about how unnecessary my post was drew more attention to it than anything else I’ve written lately, and by coming back today and dragging it back into the spotlight, he managed to get it some coverage on a local weekly’s website. If I were in that guy’s shoes, I’d be pretty furious.

Posted in Uncategorized