Reading · Hoppe Columns · RSS Amplifier

My wife and I were cleaning a basement closet full of mostly junk the other day and came across a big old box of my life.

I hadn’t seen it for many years. It was a compilation of yearbooks, pictures, awards from sixth grade, newspaper clippings and other miscellaneous tidbits my mother-the-pack-rat decided was worth keeping.

But mostly it was letters. Stacks and stacks of them, both written by me and received by me, almost all when I was between the ages of 16 and 24 and discovering who I was and what I wanted to do with my life.

I sat down to read some of them and quickly came up with two conclusions: 1) I was an immature knucklehead, and 2) I mourn for successive generations who will never appreciate the wonderful world of letters.

Nobody writes letters anymore. It’s all emails and texts. My kids won’t ever look back at the emails they wrote when they were in high school or early 20’s and realize what knuckleheads they were. Kind of sad.

I spent hours reading through mine. Ernest Hemingway’s 6000 letters are being published by Cambridge University Press in 17 volumes. Mine will remain in the box.

There were letters to and from my parents, sisters and friends. But the bulk of the letters were love letters to my high school girlfriend and then love letters to my wife before we were married.

I’m not sure how I managed to collect the letters I wrote to my high school girlfriend. I’m guessing she dumped them on my doorstep when we broke up. But they were hilarious to read, especially knowing they will be thrown out after my wife reads this.

And then there’s the letters to and from my wife. We had met in Greece when she was 18 and I was 19. She lived in Montreal and I lived in San Francisco. Phone calls were expensive in those days, so all we had were letters. So different from today.

Different but cool. So young, so naïve, so mushy. Dozens and dozens of heart-filled writing of plans for the future, all of which actually came to fruition. Hard to believe when reading the immaturity of the letters.

Letter writing is such a lost art. The prime example is my wife, who constantly announces that she absolutely hates writing. She’s fine writing emails but she’ll ask me for help writing a handwritten thank you note because she just freezes. So I gleefully showed her the first letter from her I picked up.

“SIX PAGES!” I cried. “You just go on and on and on, babbling away! And there’s about sixty other letters you wrote me, all multiple pages. You were a muse! What happened?”

She perused the six-pager, cringing at some of the mush but impressed by her volume. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just out of practice.”

“EXACTLY!” I announced. “That’s the problem. People only write emails with impersonal typing. No one knows how to put pen to paper anymore.”

I showed her some of my letters where I actually wrote in cursive. Some of it was unreadable and unintelligible, but impressive nonetheless.

I don’t know if they even teach cursive in school anymore. Another lost art, although that doesn’t warrant as much mourning.

I did type one love letter to her. I got a response chastising me for it. She said it was impersonal and cold and please refrain from ever doing it again. A perfect example of why emails can’t measure up.

It’s just progress, I guess. No postage, no four-day delays from writing to delivery 3000 miles away. Now you can have a conversation through emails and texts with instant delivery.

I suppose you could print the email chain and file it away. And then look at it and reminisce 50 years from now, like I did with my letters. But very few will. Instant gratification usually means instant disposal.

Besides, it wouldn’t be the same without the pen on the paper. With letters and handwriting, you feel the person doing the writing.

Longhand. That’s what we called writing without a typewriter in those days. Longhand, long waits for letters, and long appreciated. And a long lost art.

THE LOST ART OF LETTER WRITING

Comments