Taking Stock

Sarkozy was elected a year ago, and this blog began two weeks later. In that time I've posted 1,262 times (give or take a dozen or so guest posts). The hyperpresident elicited a hypercommentary. Readership has grown steadily from about 30 a day at the beginning to about 700 now, with a few days over 1,000. It's been interesting to be forced to attend even more closely than usual to the daily press, to the scholarly literature on contemporary France, and to my own evolving judgments, which, somewhat to my surprise, have been rather volatile, sometimes running counter to the prevailing wind, sometimes being driven before it.

Like Sarkozy, I feel a need to pull back a little from the daily press cycle. A regime that was constantly surprising at first has now settled down to a predictable pattern. Its direction, though not altogether fixed, has at least settled on a quadrant of the compass. I find myself with less to say daily and a greater need to gain some distance on events before judging them. So my intention at the moment is to write somewhat less, though of course the unforeseen may yet get the better of me. Perhaps there will be more weight in what I write, but then again perhaps the value of a blog lies more in its weightlessness and evanescence, its ability to hew closer to l'événementiel than academic writing ordinarily allows. In any case, I need a rest.

I hope you'll let me know what you'd like to see more of and what less. It's the knowledge that there are readers out there that makes the exercise worthwhile. Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll keep coming back even if the pace slows.