Is the Internet good for writers?

Author-professor Mark Dery made a good case for the negative earlier this month -– even if it was in a comment posted on the Net: http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/10/05/is-the-net-good-for-writers/

According to Dery:

“We're drowning in yak, and it's getting harder and harder to hear the insightful voices through all the media cacophony. Oscar Wilde would be just another forlorn blogger out on the media asteroid belt in our day, constantly checking his SiteMeter's Average Hits Per Day and Average Visit Length.”

Well, maybe. But I find it hard to believe that Oscar Wilde would have trouble attracting an audience on line. Gay readership alone would be enough to keep him afloat, but of course his appeal is universal.

Wilde was one of the most brilliant talkers who ever lived. Even today he is one of the most quoted, as Dorothy Parker acknowledged in her wry quatrain:

“If with the literate I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.”

Wilde could probably build an impressive readership on the Net simply by offering an epigram a day. His witticisms have filled whole books. Here are just a few:

“Twenty years of romance makes a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage makes her look like a public building.”

“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”

“In the old days men had the rack, now they have the press.”

“One who is an emperor and king may stoop down to pick up a brush for a painter, but when democracy stoops down it is merely to throw mud.”

“It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.”

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

Beyond collecting these pearls of wisdom, people would probably access Wilde’s web site for the sheer pleasure of watching him deflate the pompous, the bigoted and the obtuse.

Wilde’s outrageous humor flashed out even on the darkest occasions.

Consider the time when he was on the witness stand, being cross-examined by Edward Carson, one of the most brilliant trial attorneys of the day. Carson was attempting to establish the nature of Wilde’s relations with certain young men who were far below his social circle.

Carson: “Did you become intimate with a young man named Alphonse Conway at Worthing?”

Wilde: “Yes”

Carson: “He sold newspapers at the kiosk on the pier?”

Wilde: “No, I have never heard that up to that time his only occupation was selling newspapers. It is the first I have heard of his connection with literature.”

Later, Carson questioned Wilde about his plying young men with champagne:

Carson: “Do you drink champagne yourself?”

Wilde: “Yes; iced champagne is a favorite drink of mine – strongly against my doctor’s orders.”

Carson: “Never mind your doctor’s orders, sir.”

Wilde: “I never do.”

Wilde’s wit even overcame the ignominy of being sent to prison. Once, he found himself waiting at a railroad station to chance trains. Wilde was in a prison uniform, handcuffed between two constables. If that was not depressing enough, it was pouring rain.

Wilde turned to one of the constables and said: “If this is the way that Queen Victoria treats her convicts, she doesn’t deserve to have any.”

Would such a fount of healing laughter be “just another forlorn blogger out on the media asteroid belt”? Somehow I don’t think so.