Letter Writing
If reading Ray Monk's biography of Wittgenstein has reinforced one thing with me, it is the importance of written communication between individuals. As a know technophobe who resists most attempts to become "digitized"--this being the notable exception--I have frequently been ridiculed or patronized for my disdain of computers. Recently, for example, I found out that I actually have a University of Memphis e-mail account. A fact that had eluded me for some time. When I finally checked it I found numerous unreplied to e-mails from old friends, current professors, and administrative staff at the University. Some of my classmates found this funny, I thought it was just another example of my not caring about computers. I recently, because of a gift, have become the owner of my first computer... I essentially use it as a big typewriter. This is all besides the point, but at the same time intrinsic to it.
In a former life, I was a letter writer. Most of those people are now gone from my life, some regrettably so. Over the years, I've tried to replenish my supply of recipients of letters, but have found that many people do not return them (this is meant in no way as a reproach to anyone). Most people resort to e-mail. It is quick, free, and easy. This causes, I find, the discourse to be shaped in certain ways: thoughts are frequently coarse and inchoate; sentences are short and imprecise; vocabulary seems to be endlessly recycled; events become confined to the day's experience as opposed to the overall field of one's experience; there is a general sloppiness of expression and mind.
This is not to say that a letter is usually perfect or about more "serious" concerns. There is an art to writing a concise letter, an art that I attempt to practice but frequently fall short in execution. A letter is more frequently about the tone of what is said rather than the words themselves, while an e-mail remains what it is. There is something about holding the paper in one's hands, seeing the ink scrawled carefully (or perhaps not!) across the page, placed there by another human hand; the smell of the paper as it holds that that of the writer within itself, bringing its author along with it, making present the absent person. The letter belongs to someone and has a tangible, corporeal quality that other methods of communication just don't have.
Writing a letter takes time. No matter how fast of a writer one is, it still takes more time to write a letter than it does to type a message. Even without the consideration of just material time, to write a letter is necessarily to embark upon digressions and bring forth aspects of one's life that seem inconsequential. To write to someone is to tell them that you were thinking them, rather than thinking of them. What I mean by that is that electronic writing tends to have an anonymous or collective feel to it, something that you write in passing as that person passes through one's mind. A letter, on the other hand, is written for someone, and only that someone; the letter expresses the relation of one person to another person and not one person toward a certain topic.
The whole point of writing this little bit has been to ask a simple question: what does this mean? Why has the practice of writing to one another died out, and what does this say about us as a society? Will biographers of the future have anything interesting to write about? I, for one, do not save many of my e-mails, but I have every letter that has ever been written to me. I think that I would have to agree with Rilke, as he discusses Rodin, that the gestures we make in our modern world are becoming more and more nervous and in their temerity, we are losing out on the richness of human experience.
In a former life, I was a letter writer. Most of those people are now gone from my life, some regrettably so. Over the years, I've tried to replenish my supply of recipients of letters, but have found that many people do not return them (this is meant in no way as a reproach to anyone). Most people resort to e-mail. It is quick, free, and easy. This causes, I find, the discourse to be shaped in certain ways: thoughts are frequently coarse and inchoate; sentences are short and imprecise; vocabulary seems to be endlessly recycled; events become confined to the day's experience as opposed to the overall field of one's experience; there is a general sloppiness of expression and mind.
This is not to say that a letter is usually perfect or about more "serious" concerns. There is an art to writing a concise letter, an art that I attempt to practice but frequently fall short in execution. A letter is more frequently about the tone of what is said rather than the words themselves, while an e-mail remains what it is. There is something about holding the paper in one's hands, seeing the ink scrawled carefully (or perhaps not!) across the page, placed there by another human hand; the smell of the paper as it holds that that of the writer within itself, bringing its author along with it, making present the absent person. The letter belongs to someone and has a tangible, corporeal quality that other methods of communication just don't have.
Writing a letter takes time. No matter how fast of a writer one is, it still takes more time to write a letter than it does to type a message. Even without the consideration of just material time, to write a letter is necessarily to embark upon digressions and bring forth aspects of one's life that seem inconsequential. To write to someone is to tell them that you were thinking them, rather than thinking of them. What I mean by that is that electronic writing tends to have an anonymous or collective feel to it, something that you write in passing as that person passes through one's mind. A letter, on the other hand, is written for someone, and only that someone; the letter expresses the relation of one person to another person and not one person toward a certain topic.
The whole point of writing this little bit has been to ask a simple question: what does this mean? Why has the practice of writing to one another died out, and what does this say about us as a society? Will biographers of the future have anything interesting to write about? I, for one, do not save many of my e-mails, but I have every letter that has ever been written to me. I think that I would have to agree with Rilke, as he discusses Rodin, that the gestures we make in our modern world are becoming more and more nervous and in their temerity, we are losing out on the richness of human experience.