Each Letter Tells A Story
Which is why I can't throw any out
“The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters.”
― Lewis Carroll
In this issue:
I love letters, most of the time
Letters Out Loud
Reading Other People’s Mail: Links
A few weeks ago, I was plowing ruthlessly through every box and drawer in our storage area of the garage. The recycle bin filled and the give-away pile grew at a brisk, satisfying pace until I arrived at the last two file drawers crammed with files and large manila envelopes stuffed with letters.
All progress on “Project Clean Sweep” stalled as I read through each page I uncovered in those files.
This haphazard archive contained letters from my my mother, friends I haven’t seen in years, an unknown former colleague whose signature was illegible, aunts, uncles, my son. I found birthday cards from my dad and his wife, from my ex-husband’s grandmother who I adored as much as my own. I found a sheaf of printed emails, each a sentence or two long, from my grandfather who had just begun to play with his computer. I found thank you notes from nieces and surprising letters from my sisters and my brothers penned when we were all in our teens and twenties. These were remarkable not because of the news they contained but that they’d been written at all. We were each spreading out across the country and deeper into our individual lives. When we talked, it was usually by telephone. As I read the small collection of letters my siblings had written, I remembered the promise but also the long stretches of uncertainty of those years as we all stumbled our way into adulthood. Their voices filtered back to me from a time when we were all just finding those voices.
I uncovered rejection letters from publishers and two offers of employment for companies I never joined. I found correspondence from two men I’d known in my twenties and cringed. Reading them, I relived moments of hurt and humiliation that returned all too vividly. Then I emerged back into the present filled with relief. I’d survived all that. I ripped them up and threw them into the bin.
There were letters I wrote but never sent to my son. There were copies of letters I sent him that I wished I had not.
The details of the letters I rediscovered in those files are important only to me but their presence, and the fact that I had hung on to them for so long got me thinking about what I love about letters. I love the privacy of them, the quiet space they give you to write and read and reflect before sending or replying. I love their ability to open a window on the past or to a person’s ideas and thoughts including my own. I love how even the briefest, most ordinary letter reveals something about the person who wrote it and the time and place in which it was written. I even love how stumbling across a letter from a painful moment in my past can help me see how far I’ve come, or if I’ve made any progress at all.
Most of all, I love how letters make a writer out of the sender and a reader out of the receiver. There’s no need to worry about structure— it’s already there: the greeting, the body, the signature — all we have to do is say what we need to say in however many words we need. Every letter I found in my files contained basic story elements: voice, character, desires, all or part of a series of events that could as easily be called plot. Combined, they help to tell a larger story that encompasses them and me.
A letter does not loom large the way a book can to both writers and readers. Letters are contained, private, written for an audience of one and, sometimes, none. When I am confronted with a problem I cannot solve in my writing or my life, I write letters to a sister, a friend, my mother, or my husband in the next room. I spell it all out. I experiment, embarrass myself, and eventually, I find my way through the problem. They never see these letters but they have helped me just by being there.
When the isolation from the pandemic took hold last spring I began to write this weekly newsletter. Every week some of you write back. In our own way, we are finding our way through this problem together by taking turns being writers and readers. Here’s to the journey.
And here are some links to more letters that are fun to read (and hear), interesting, or just plain necessary for the times we are in.
Other People’s Letters
I love reading other people’s mail. I’m addicted to Letters of Note, a daily “newsletter about letters” from Shaun Usher. He draws material from letters published by writers, artists, editors, comedians, the newspapers, essayists, and more. Each day’s newsletter centers on a single theme. Here is an excerpt from a recent newsletter “There are Several Kinds of Love” that will get you ready for Valentine’s Day:
“You might think about me a bit & whether you could bear the idea of marrying me. Of course you haven’t got to decide, but think about it. I can’t advise you in my favour because I think it would be beastly for you, but think how nice it would be for me. I am restless & moody & misanthropic & lazy & have no money except what I earn and if I got ill you would starve. In fact it’s a lousy proposition.”
Evelyn Waugh | Letter to Laura Herbert | Spring 1936
Even better are the Letters Live shows that Usher organized before the pandemic in which actors are recruited to read letters out loud from a podium. Some of the original writers were famous. Others wrote strongly worded letters to the editor of their local papers. All are incredibly fun and show all the ways a letter can drive its way home into the heart of the receiver.
Letters Meant for All of Us
The format of a letter frees a writer to get to the point or to say things that cannot be said otherwise. Here are links to essays, nonfiction books, and novels all written as letters we all can read.
India Gonzalez, James Baldwin, Ta Nehisi Coates
“I am writing to you from my Harlem apartment, asking you to join me in my living room. Lean into me so that I may feel your presence. I come to you in a familiar form, as a tired Black woman. I need to write my thoughts down and out.” - India Gonzalez, “My Beloved Black Ancestors” from I’m Writing To Your: Letters From Writers of the Black Literary Community
“Dear James:
I have begun this letter five times and torn it up five times. I keep seeing your face, which is also the face of your father and my brother. I have known both of you all your lives and have carried your daddy in my arms and on my shoulders, kissed him and spanked him and watched him learn to walk. I don't know if you have known anybody from that far back, if you have loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man. You gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort.” - “From A Letter to My Nephew” by James Baldwin
“I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.” ― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me.
A Letter From a Poet to His Mother
“That time when I was five or six and, playing a prank, leapt out at you from behind the hallway door, shouting Boom! You screamed, face raked and twisted, then burst into sobs, clutching your chest as you leaned against the door, gasping. I stood, confused, my toy Army helmet tilted on my head. I was an American boy parroting what I saw on TV. I didn’t know that the war was still inside you, that there was a war to begin with, that once it enters you it never leaves—but merely echoes, a sound forming the face of your own son. Boom.” - From “A Letter to My Mother That She Will Never Read” by Ocean Vuong
Letters from Travelers to Strangers They Meet Along The Way
“It was the end of July in the Borneo jungle, a place without clocks, days still guided by the sun’s movements. You were leaning against your rusted silver truck, wringing calloused hands together, a brimmer hat pulled down low.” - “To The Swimmer in the Borneo Rainforest” by Meghan Gunn in Off Assignment
Fictional Letters
I was going to list a few novels written entirely in letters but then I found this list, 100 Must-Read Epistolary From Past to Present by Book Riot, and it is so complete there is nothing to add. I’ve added one of my favorites, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society to our list on bookshop.org. Let me know yours and I’ll add them too.
Collections
If you are a writer, and are a snoop, you want to read letters from writers to just about anyone. Here are some collections of letters from writers.
Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters by Carla Kaplan
From Bustle: “9 Books of Letters by Famous Authors That Will Inspire You To Correspond More With the People in Your Life”
That’s it for this week. Write me a letter and let me know how you’re doing and what you’re reading or what’s on your list of books to read. We’ll add them to the Spark Community Recommendations page where each sale helps local bookstores and add up to ways we can support literacy programs.
Gratefully,
Betsy
P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…
It’s not a literary masterpiece but it’s one of my favorites from the recent dive into the archives
Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”
What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.
Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.
I can’t wait to see what you send!
I am a huuuuuuuuuge fan of letters!