Savoring, Reading, Saving Letters
After I completed my year of reading a book a day, many people asked me, “Is the ‘book’ dead?” I answered with confidence: “Absolutely not.” New books — good books — come out every week, from the large publishers and from small independent publishing houses. Millions of readers around the world buy the new releases as hard copies or download them onto reading devices. Libraries around the world continue to lend out books, book blogs abound on the internet, and book groups are exploding in numbers, with over 250,000 active book groups estimated in the United States alone.
I love to read books, and I also love to read letters. Not only letters written to me, but letters from long ago and far away. Similar to diaries and journals, letters are precious as quotidien recordings of every day happenings. In addition, the span of letters over the years of human existence are a window into how humans have explored, depicted, and dissected events and experiences over the centuries, and how they have sought to share ideas and observations in their letters as a way of connecting with one another.
Letters cover everything from love to war, finances to religion, child rearing to grave site planning. Letters offer wisdom and foolery, sincerity and pretense, affection and dislike. Letters offer connection between writer and reader. Letters are a unique window into the human experience. And letters, while not “dead”, are most definitely an endangered species.
Over the next year or so, I will explore and write about the phenomenon of letters, analyzing their role through the ages as recorders of events, proof of human experience, and mode of connection.
I will examine all categories of letters, including love letters, family letters, letters of war and politics, letters of business, and letters of shared wisdom. I will write of my own experiences with all of these types of letters, and also use historical facts, both fun and serious, to illustrate the potency of letters.
My goals? To demonstrate the importance of letter writing, as much for the words shared as for the physical manifestation of connection. To push for a resurgence of letter writing, and a staving off of the extinction of the art and beauty of written correspondence. To make a solid case that letter writing is one of our most beautiful and powerful means of connection, remembrance, and resilience.
I would love to hear from anyone who has a great story about letters, You can share your story with me here or on Facebook. Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you!
10 Responses to Exploring the History of Letters
I love the art of the written letter and cherish the few that grace my mailbox these days. I am trying to teach my children how to write letters, not just thank you’s for the legos or gift certificates, but to make connections with distant relatives. I always buy them stationery for their birthdays in hopes that it inspires them to leave their texting worlds behind from time to time.
Glad I found you. Thank the NY Times.
Hope you’ll stay in touch.
Shel
Carefully chosen words, whether privately shared in a personal letter or published in a public forum, make a society more civilized, its citizens more compassionate, and the world an inviting opportunity, rather than a lonely, scary place. Thank you for this interesting blog, for encouraging reading, and for proving reading’s value.
I want simply to echo Beth’s elegant post and to say thank you for the comfort of walking a bit on the path you began.
So enjoyed the 8/14 NYT article on you and look forward to following your reviews of books. I’ve become a reader later in my life, and as a result have many worlds to explore. Thanks for being an inspiration.
I am hopelessly devoted to the ancient art of writing on paper. I know that I cannot do without computers and e-mail for my work (I work in a bookshop (de Tribune) in Maastricht, The Netherlands). As long as it is strictly business, e-mail is fine, but I will not use it for personal messages.
There is nothing better than sitting down at my desk, filling my fountainpen, taking out the right kind of paper for my correspondent of that moment (the same choice goes for the right fountainpen by the way) and start writing.
Sometimes this amounts to no more than friendly chatter. More often it helps me claerify my own thoughts and on a good day it leads to a letter worth saving – but because I save all letters that I get as well as copies of those I write, every letter-day is a good day.
I wish you many good days.
Good for you, and for everyone to whom you compose your letters. Read on, and write letters, always.
I must agree with you that writing a letter is endangered, but I also must argue so is any type of writing. My frineds and me write novels, but I am the only one who still writes her ideas on paper, and not type it out. I feel by writing it with your hand, and not typing a keyboard, you are putting alittle more of yourself and a little more effort in whatever you are trying to say. Thats why i have my friends write letters to me. That way i can feel the effort put into it.
What a fantastic project. I wish you well Nina, and hope you reach the ultimate goal of bringing back the art of letter writing.
Warmest
Rob
Thanks Rob! I hope it is an not a eulogy I am working on but a revival.