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Dying Art Of The Letter

In the Guardian:

Nobody writes letters any more: at least not the kind of erudite, humorous missives that are the hallmark of great correspondence. As we are so often told, we live in the digital age. Like the rest of us, authors now largely correspond with their agents, friends, contemporaries and, occasionally, fans through email, not snail mail (I’ve only encountered one writer who refuses to use what he called “that electronic mail nonsense”. Despite his illegible scrawl – and mine – he insisted that all correspondence be in writing. But this is most certainly a dying breed.)

Emails are great for getting in touch quickly and easily, but as literary vehicles they are severely lacking. Notoriously Manichean, digital messages tend to oscillate between the deathly dull and formal and the blithely irreverent (complete with BTW, FYI, LOL’s and garbled text-speak) with precious little middle ground. Letters can be revealing, expansive, humorous; emails, even at their best, tend to exhibit only one of these characteristics of good writing. Of course, many contemporary novelists use social media such as Twitter and Facebook, sometimes to great effect; but publishing revolution or no publishing revolution, I find it hard to imagine that generations to come will one day download the “Collected Tweets of Neil Gaiman” on to their e-reader.

The article is worth a read, if only for the nostalgia kick. I own very few author letter collections – though the Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961 are quite superb, and well worth dipping into. They’re probably only for the serious fan, too, ones who look beyond novels for more understanding of them. Or for authors who led exciting lives.

Are blogs the modern-day equivalent of letters, just read in real time? I mean, they’re incredibly less interesting for the large part – a lot of author blogs seem to be graveyards of irrelevant news updates. Some do it well. Jonathan Carroll’s blog is a very good comparison to traditional letters, or even notebook. (As it says in the header: “A friend asked yesterday if this blog is addressed to anyone in particular? I said yes– it’s a love letter to someone I haven’t met yet.”)

Digital collections are often compiled in print form – John Scalzi has done so. And while there is a lot of white noise out there on social networks, which makes it difficult to find content that is profound enough, even Tweets can be collected and sold these days.

It’ll be interesting to see how this all pans out over the years, and how future author non-fiction will be assembled.

25
Jun 2010
AUTHOR Mark Newton
CATEGORY

discussions, writing & publishing

COMMENTS 11 Comments
  • http://ofblog.blogspot.com Larry

    I write letters, but only to this one young woman I know overseas. Maybe only 4-5 letters a year (in addition to countless emails), but it is true that the act of writing adds something to the quality of the letters (I photocopy mine and save all hers). I’ve found that I write much better in those letters than I do on my blog (yes, it’s true!). Sometimes, it’s just the thought that underlies the extra effort and the time afforded by such a choice that I believe leads to more profound, reflective thoughts.

  • http://Www.petervbrett.com Peat

    I file this article under ‘elitist nonsense’. I have long e-mail correspondences with a number of people (including some notable modern authors) that are neither dull and formal nor full of chatroom acronyms. I imagine the author of this article also has a tendency to shake his cane and shout at kids who enter his yard uninvited to retrieve a lost ball.

    I don’t understand this terrifying fear of modernization. Authors used to hand write their books, as well. Very few do that anymore, but I’ve never seen LOL used in a novel.

    I hope I don’t get like this, grumping nostalgically about airport security and airplane seats when when my grandkids are all about the matter-energy transport, but I probably will.

  • Nick

    Tangibility. The physical artifact. Once it’s gone, we’re gone!

  • http://Www.petervbrett.com Peat

    Also, my handwriting sucks. ROTFLOL

  • Nick

    Modernity and thereby modernisation is an illusion, Peat. There is nothing modern about either you or I but for virture of the fact that we are ‘here’ and ‘now’ with the ability to seemingly look back. As it is an illusion that ‘modern is cool’. It ain’t, it’s just here, now. It is the greatest delusion and conceit at the end of the 20th century (or any century). Bach is cool. Shakespeare is cool. (What they say and express even cooler and transcend the seemingly relative, that’s the magic of art.) The compass is cool. The Sextant is cool. Woodblocks are cool. The printing press is cool. Give me a woman sending me a letter with her perfume permeating it and with nothing else written but her signed name to some bloody email, any day ! Luddites rule!

  • Nick

    Aye, too strong. Hot weather. Grouchy. Grr!

  • http://blog.markcnewton.com Mark Charan Newton

    Larry – I’ve often thought you’d be the sort that would enjoy proper correspondence. And you’re right – that extra time allows a little extra meaning. Maybe I’ll scrap my email and go snail mail.

    Peat – shouldn’t you be on a beach?! Yeah, I’ve found emails certainly haven’t been a barrier to the profound. And if anything, the modern language used online has allowed for more humour and nuance.

    Nick – you need to fan yourself a little. :) It’s not just me, I’m sure, but there’s something to be said about looking back with such romance. Maybe people will look back with romance at the primitive computers we’re using right now, pointing out the charms we have yet to see ourselves…

  • Jo Pearson

    “I file this article under ‘elitist nonsense’.”

    I’m with Peat on this one.

    “Modernity and thereby modernisation is an illusion, Peat. There is nothing modern about either you or I but for virture of the fact that we are ‘here’ and ‘now’ with the ability to seemingly look back.”

    “Give me a woman sending me a letter with her perfume permeating it and with nothing else written but her signed name to some bloody email, any day !”

    Nick,

    Correct me if i’m mistaken, but with one breath you dismiss the trappings of the present as illusory, whilst with the next revel in the trappings of the past. That seems a little like trying to have one’s cake and eat it too ;)

    Additionally, while I agree in principle with your comment about the ephemeral nature of human understanding, it seems a little overkill to bring it up in a commentary about the future of correspondance involving letters and/or e-mail :D

  • Nick

    Jo – ‘E started it!

    It was the notion of modernity, not the present I was dismissing, Jo! The past is there for us, the artifacts of it, the evidence of it, the tangibility of it. This notion of being cool with modern technology, by inference indicating one’s own default sophistication in being enlightened enough to do so, to embrace it, it irks me because it costs nothing and is erroneous. We are no more modern than the Norseman who set foot on the shores of America thinking that he was going to own that manor. Like he was then, so we are now, just here, the most recent gesture of human life. That doesn’t make us sophisticated or ‘modern’ whatever that means. It’s just so damn myopic and silly, the opposite of what it disports itself to be.

    Hopefully we are smart enough not to bank everything on electronic technology. But I tend to doubt it!

    There is hope, or maybe it’s just the last gasp.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/20/robert-mccrum-digital-books

    ‘while I agree in principle with your comment about the ephemeral nature of human understanding, it seems a little overkill to bring it up in a commentary about the future of correspondance involving letters’

    …Microcosm/Macrocosm!

    To paraphrase what an old Russian writer once said – one who left some pretty fine artifacts behind him: ‘It is amazing how complete is the delusion that new is good’.

  • Jo Pearson

    “To paraphrase what an old Russian writer once said – one who left some pretty fine artifacts behind him: ‘It is amazing how complete is the delusion that new is good’.”

    I’m with you up until the last part. As a humanist I would point to a long historical trend of ‘new’ technology (generally) improving the lot of the average human being. ‘New’ in many instances builds upon and improves upon the old. I agree that the newness isn’t what makes something ‘better’ or ‘worse’, (in my books a new nuclear warhead is even less welcome than an old one!) but on the other hand, ‘new’ does frequently translate into ‘better’.

    In this particular case, letters are being surpassed by e-mail because they are a much less efficient form of communication. Letters still have their place, but for the most part people PREFER for their correspondance to reach people in a number of seconds rather than in a number of days. In this sense, e-mail is indeed ‘better’ as a technology.

    “‘It is amazing how complete is the delusion that new is good’.”

    It’s funny you bring up this particuler quotation, because for the most part i’ve encountered the opposite mentality in people:

    ‘It is amazing how complete the delusion is that old is good’.

  • http://Www.petervbrett.com Peat

    Nick, I never suggested that modern people were somehow better than their forebears. My problem is with people who have a dismissive attitude towards modern conveniences and technology and act like they are too good to have anything to do with them.

    Until they get cancer, of course. Then they’re all for modern science.

    If you enjoy hand-writing letters, by all means do so with my respect. But if you are going to dismiss the entire medium of electronic communication because you don’t like the internet lingo used by the kids these days, I am calling bullshit.