Aristotle’s classic how-to-tell-a-story text, Poetics, encourages a great writer to bring a reader to emotional catharsis in a mere three sentences. (Example: Blair’s mom asks her to model the Waldorf clothing line. Blair’s greedy mom tricks Blair’s recently reunited best friend Serena into replacing Blair as the model. Serena realizes what has happened, and the two go shopping and take pictures at The Plaza! Whew, I feel better.) Of course, those three sentences must be fleshed out into a full, preferably hour-long piece of media, but the ever-influential Greeks believed that a clear idea was at the heart of moving people.

Perhaps this is not so different from the modern blog. I used to think that blogging wasn’t “literary”—that it took little bites off of a piece of meat rather than fully digging its teeth in. But since coming to NYU, I’ve learned how many people actually know how to string a sentence together, and pontificate in seemingly well-written prose for pages without really saying anything astute.

Hence, I’ve come around to the blog: if one can say something original in a funny and accessible paragraph-long form, perhaps he is the better story-teller for it. Maybe modern Americans aren’t getting less willing to work for their stories, they just didn’t need to read such lengthy pieces in the first place.

Of course, there’s a place for a non-fiction investigation or a novel, but if blogging allows gifted thinkers to get their points across (and know what their point is to begin with) while referencing Gossip Girl to and fro, it might be more literary than I thought. Besides, with many once-lucrative markets coming undone, blogging might be the most dependable industry out there right now. Just ask this guy.

Photo: Flickr user Annie Mole used under the Creative Commons