Two years ago next month, I started a blog— that is, a “web log,” a website on which I keep a public journal, written in collaboration with the Chicago-based literary critic Laura Demanski (who is known on the blog as “Our Girl in Chicago”). It is called About Last Night: Terry Teachout on the Arts in New York City. Laura and I post there each day, and anyone with a computer and access to the Internet can read what we write by going to www.terryteachout.com.

Like nearly all blogs, ours looks like a diary, only in reverse. The entries, which bloggers call postings, are dated chronologically, with the most recent appearing at the top of the screen. Informal in style, and varying in length from a sentence or two to well over 1,000 words, they all touch on some cultural topic currently of interest to one or both of us. In addition to these postings, About Last Night can also be used to view many of the articles that Laura and I write for such print-media publications as COMMENTARY, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post; to read articles by other writers to whom we refer in our postings; to visit any of the hundred-odd “artblogs” and art-related websites listed on our “blogroll”; to order copies of the books, CD’s, and DVD’s that we mention; and to send e-mail to either of us. We also post a top-five list of “things we like.” As I write these words, the list, which is updated every week or so, consists of an off-Broadway play, an art exhibition, a jazz CD, a DVD of an independent film, and a new paperback edition of a long out-of-print novel.

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