Endzone

[poliphilo]

time_shark drew my attention to Thomas Disch's LJ blog Endzone. and I spent most of yesterday evening browsing it. I wish I'd known about it sooner. I could have friended him and interacted. Now, of course, it's a closed and completed work- "deleted and purged" from LJ's server and housed elsewhere.

Endzone ran for just over two years. It's fascinating to watch this ageing writer of some importance as he adjusts to and settles into the new medium. He seems to have found it fun. Publishers may have been increasingly unwilling to buy his work, but here on LJ he could go on talking to the world- and have it talk back. Disch was ill, embittered and recently bereaved- and it shows- but he keeps on bravely and cheerily performing- tapdancing on the edge- and turning out poems like there was no tomorrow- until eventually there wasn't. The last entry- dated less than two months ago- deals, but not in any despairing vein, with the still topical subject of rising food prices. A couple of days later he shot himself.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'll have to look out for it.