Daily Blague

Web log awards contests are demanding. They make a Booker panelist out of everybody.

It was fun, at first, to run through the "Satin Pajama Awards" for best European blogs, at Fistful of Euros, because I recognized a few of the sites and was - d'oh - happy as a puppy to vote for them. Then it occurred to me that I was screwing up big time. The point of this exercise couldn't, after all, be to ratify my inexperience. By the time I "woke up," I was looking at the "Best Personal Weblog" category, definitely one that I'd want to take seriously. Oh, the hours! I still haven't been through all of the candidates.

Maybe people who haven't been blogging for six months ought to be disqualified.

But how to distinguish among the best personal bloggers? Let's start with Veuve Tarquine, of De bric et de blog. Mme Tarquine is a thirty-six year-old widow whose husband died of a brain tumor, leaving her with a couple of children and a massive loss of grand amour. How to compare this site with My Boyfriend is a Twat? The author here, Zoe, is fortyish child of diplomats who was born in Saigon and who has never been able to stand her "native" Britain. Her former husband lives within hailing distance of Brussels, Zoe's current domicile, so the three dhildren go back and forth, but always at home is "Quarsan," the boyfriend-who's-a-twat. Zoe looks rather like Helen Mirren, and seems to have many Tennysonian issues to match. Who's ahead here? More to the point, what are the criteria? Surely it can't be the throb-value of one's personal story; that would favor sensationalism. In fact, I would give top marks to the diarist who, without doing anything really remarkable, produced a steady flow of compelling entries. But what am I expecting here, great writing?

Then consider Mig at Metamorphosisim. Mig is an American guy currently living in Austria - he left the United States at about the age of twenty - and he appears to have an Austrian wife and two daughters, whom he calls Beta and Gamma. I have read what feels like a great deal of this site, both recent and dating back to its inception, but I still don't know quite what Mig's relationship with his wife is like (he rarely mentions her lately), and I don't know what Mig does for a living, although he is clearly musical and the pursuit of a musical career in Austria makes tremendous sense. Perhaps I simply haven't hit upon the posting that explains it all. That is always a problem with anonymous blogs. I doubt that their writers intend to mystify, but mystification is inevitable in a two year old blog that never names names. I wish Mr Mig every success in finding a French harp for Beta and a good cello for himself.

My vote, if it mattered, would go to Londonmark, a site that is not up for election in any category. I learned about it from the blogroster of My Boyfriend....; Zoe singled it out for its writing. The writing is very fine indeed, although perhaps a tad too studied. It is also ruefully funny. There seems to be a line in fictional sketches that may prove interesting to follow. But following these sites will require a certain investment in time, a diligence in keeping up - and a willingness to have all of one's first impressions junked. I still remember the shock of learning that Édouard, at Sale Bête, is not French at all.

Actually, I have learned many things from Édouard, among them the importance of crisp, uncluttered presentation. I always know exactly where I am when I visit Sale Bête, and I know what to look for. That's why, in the end, I cast my vote for La Coquette, the journal of a twenty-four year old American girl who is really French and who has returned to the land of her father(s). She lives across the hall from her cousin, Jeanne, in a flat in the Quartier latin, and in this post she has Jeanne sum up the new TV shows. In English.

And now that I've voted, I discover, without surprise, that Veuve Tarquine has a very strong lead and will probably win the award.