The Man and (The Woman and) The Mask

So we've taken our positions in the war against epiphany. Battle lines are drawn, erect. Some of you have rightly slashed at the hot-air-balloon that is my prose; and good, since it's there to be deflated. Others have taken part in the festivities. What a brilliant drama of comments has spawned from the little diatribe that could! All participants in the tussle of ownership, the great territorial conflict of interpretation. The real juice began to flow long after my post finished.

And yet, something worries me about my varied receptions (and whether I've received these receptions correctly). I had hoped a fairly blatant irony would drip out of that 'article', an irony that was indeed recognised (whether as unconscious or conscious): I was writing in a voice which was highly opinionated about the evils of firm opinions. It affirmed modesty, arrogantly. I feel silly attempting to deconstruct my own attempt at humour, but I felt that was a critical current of the whole piece. Sure, the claiming of epiphany does give me (if the me of this post can be aligned with the I of the previous) the shits, but I took care to filter this through an overblown mouthpiece. Satire is an extreme sport, in so far as it demands extremity of opinion. Risky, vertiginous, full of sweeping, flailing swords of generalisation. The ferocity of the satirist's opinion increases at a rate indirectly proportional to his/her knowledge. Less reason, more roar.

What concerns me about many readers (myself included - for my reading at some stage morphed into a lazy scan of quantity over quality) is that they don't seem to be sufficiently alive to the flexibility of the writer's voice. Of course, the contracts between writer and reader are always different, and signed at different times. Text framed as a newspaper article, for example, inherently contains an agreement that the facts will speak, and they will arrive through a transparent mouthpiece, unfiltered by a voice. Fiction, on the other hand, has other programmed expectations: among them, the freedom of the 'writer' to be distinct from the 'narrator', with the former controlling the latter. But we stumble when the text enters cyberspace and leaves the accountability of the heavier, inkier print author. How does one read an unlabelled, unprogrammed Blog with only one post to its name? How does one form the Blogger behind this Blog? Do we need their corporeality to engage with them, or can we grapple with shadows?

To plead the writer's mask may sound like a cop-out; and indeed, it will not always stand as a defence. Somewhere along the line, the writer has to face up to the responsibility of having written. Those figures who inform public opinion especially - Jonesy, Miranda Devine etc - need to back their creations bravely. But there is nothing wrong, even in these most extreme cases of self and opinion coalescing indistinguishably, with remembering the fluidity of voice. A writer approaches a product which is particularly manipulable. And this product can, as a result, be quite beautifully insincere. My favourite authors have mastered the art of skimming across the surface with agility, wielding their voice and mask as lightly and dexterously as a dancer. The loss of insincerity would be a tragic one: and I think (finally, an assertion!) that this applies to blogging as much as it does fiction.

Ultimately, the loss of control a writer experiences when anything is 'published' is an exhilarating feeling. What matter perceived misconceptions when they integrally help fertilise a rich world of readings? And it is in that most democratic of spaces, the net, where readings are perhaps most impossible to pin down. The wonderland of pseudonyms and avatars is a fantastic place to be ripped to shreds and re-sutured, all in the comfort of your own home: who knows whether or not Amenite is really a corpulent Bangladeshi addicted to Tasty Cheese, or whether or not I am really a black finger-puppeteer with three criminal convictions to my name. And, finally, does it matter? Online identity, like all written identities, has a strong hand in governing reception. The important thing is to keep the mask in the back of the mind as you read, a caution against face value; and have it ready to put on, when prepared to play along.