June 25, 2004
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In A Flight Risk today, Isabella has a long and thoughtful discussion of weblog fiction. She takes me (and others) to task for supposing that she is herself a fiction.

One correction: Isabella at one point refers to people like me and jill/txt as "detractors". I'm no detractor: I think Isabella is terrific! I'm not sure she's real, precisely, in the sense that you and I are real. But, really, does that matter to her, or to me?

Isabella: any tips for visiting Vienna? Things to do, people to see, pastries to sample? Let me know!

Update: Isabella emailed me to pass along the Viennese travel tips. She justly upbraids me for sloppy reading: my mistake. I still think she's terrific. Isabella: do you have any friends you'd like me to say 'hi' to, while I'm in Vienna? Errands you'd like me to run?

For those following along at home, there are wheels within wheels here. In her Vienna notes, for example, Isabella calls Kärtner Straße 'the Michigan Avenue of Vienna.' Now, you probably don't know that I grew up in Chicago. But Isabella does! If you're from Bergen or Bangkok or Boston, you might not even know that Michigan Avenue is the Michigan Avenue of Chicago. This is very nice writing, done very quickly and playing to multiple audiences really nicely.

Or maybe everyone knows it. Maybe it's a shot in the dark, or I'm missing the point entirely. In Chicago, we always assumed we were the second city -- and suspected we werere really the 22nd. But I wouldn't have known that Michigan Avenue is the Kärtner Straße of Chicago, and I sure wouldn't have planted my cue so deftly.