William F. Buckley should get sick more often.
Today's column, which can be found on TownHall.com, contains the following gem:
...It is the responsibility of men and women who seek an audience for their writing beyond the family to instruct or entertain, or to die trying. The ratio is not definitively established, between skills disposed of and weight of literary production.
The grand meaning of this lesson being that eminent people can write eminently awful books and get away with it, and that medical science falls short of shielding us from bad books.
Buckley is writing about Henry James's novel The American, but this quote applies to the blogosphere more than it does to century-dead novelists. Every blogger who wants others to read his work -- and let's face it, that's all of us -- should "instruct or entertain...or die trying."
That is an insanely tough challenge to live up to, but I feel equal to it. How about you?