 Everything the internet, in all its iterations, has produced since the mid-1990s to early aughts blog, Mango Pudding Blues, has been a disappointment. Unable to be confined by the tropes of the genre or medium—because there weren’t any—MPB thrived in the vastness where most withered. It existed for no purpose beyond experimentation in idle erudition. Because of that (or despite it, it’s really hard to say, these things are just words), MPB was better reading than all the supposedly important novels that came out those years. Sorry Michael Chabon, but somewhere deep inside of you, you must know this to be true. You’re the continuation of John Cheever in the same way that Avril Lavigne is the continuation of Joni Mitchell.
I found remnants of MPB on the waybackmachine. This entry is dated Thursday, May 29, 2003. "SHOULDERING OUR BOLDER Perhaps you are feeling that we are neglecting you. Perhaps you feel we’ve been backsliding. Perhaps your eyes slide down our paltry posts of the last weeks and you sneer at what you imagine to be our indolence. Our laziness. Our lack of fiber. Imagine, though, gentle reader, how our friends feel. How our loved ones feel. How our brother feels. Because we at Mango Pudding Blues have been as sullen with our loved ones as we have been with you. We at Mango Pudding Blues have been as elusive, as erratic, as evasive with them as we are with you. No, we have not been giving you our all. Instead, we have been mostly shouldering our boulder up the hill, the same hill, every day, day after day, sweating, cursing, complaining, pushing and kicking and humping that son of a bitch up the hill. Every day. And every day it’s back at the bottom. You know? You know? […]” Yes, I do know--now. Oh man, do I get it. Comments are closed.
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