"It's like sucking mayonnaise through a Brillo pad."
I'm not feeling so hot about living, so what? What call is it to drill people in their ear? I'm typical.
Clay Shirky has come up with the clever estimate that 100 million hours of human endeavor has gone into the creation of Wikipedia, which means that 90 million hours have been invested in Simpson's-related entries and editing and re-editing the entry on abortion. This is, coincidentally, the amount of time YM-related persons spend parsing such essential issues as "should Emily Gould even be considered a writer at this point?" over the course of an average weekend.
Now, I'm sure there's a blog devoted to this, or some nerd game or whatever, but you know what Wikipedia does not have? An entry on Padgett Powell. Powell is the author of several novels, most notably Edisto, which was excerpted in The New Yorker, and nominated for the American Book Awards for best first novel in 1984. He teaches writing in Gainsville, and is held in high regard by most people who think of themselves as serious readers or writers (a suspect group, surely). And, as you might expect, my favorite living American author.
He is also, quite perversely, the reason I'm on this blog (an interesting -- if interesting is understood as 'interesting to people who talk about blogs on weekends' -- story I cannot tell since at least two other why emmers have several persons involved on their redacted lists). That fact will not merit inclusion in his unwritten entry, but nor should his claim "My insignificance is not to be contested" serve as a justification for his continued exclusion. I've been checking off and on for the past two years. And like the assumed, unknown blog game referenced above, it's a cheap jibe to construct "In a world where X (X being MisShapes, Julia Allison or Keith Gessen) gets an entry, why not Powell?" For a moment, let me be cheap.
And I'm not asking someone to run out and create one because of this complaint (like we have that kind of juice anyway). Rather, if 'write Wikipedia entry on Padgett Powell' is not on your to-do list, if this at all creates an interest in you, check back now and again, and marvel at what else constitutes merit every day as those 100 million hours grow in new dribs and drabs. Or, you know, don't. It's probably better if you don't.
Image: Hungry World, East Broad Street, Savannah. With an SX-70, of course.
