Everybody's thinkin' of you -- PS I love you

This is indeed a puzzlement. I just read that Graham Greene, one of my favorite novelists, thought that Ralph Richardson, one of my favorite old-school English actors, was an intolerable old hambone who took liberties with the writings of others when he performed. He told Ralph (pron. ‘Rafe’) so in a letter. Now I’m conflicted. Can I still like and admire them both? Sort of like when best friends get divorced. Is it still OK to like both Scott and Zelda?

Anyway, the Greene revelation came about from reading an article in the Globe & Mail’s ‘Books’ section from last weekend. The section was devoted entirely to the collections of selected letters from various writers and performers that have been published in recent times.

Included in the reviews were the epistolary musings of that gay old dog (gay used in both senses of the word) Noel Coward, the astonishing and exhausting Mitford sisters, the aforementioned Greene, and so forth. Enjoyable reviews and I am tempted to acquire some of the collections.

It put me in mind of the fact that letter writing was once an ‘art’ and it is one that has sadly been lost. It may not ever be found again, considering the fact that, in terms of the younger generation, ‘literacy’ (not text-messaging argot crap) is a criterion. Indeed, it is virtually mandatory.

"I'm gonna sit right down and text-message myself a letter." just would not work.

I am as guilty as the next person in this regard. Technology has killed an impulse that had both legitimacy and romance connected with it. But, like you, I am inclined to email. It’s so easy, and you don’t have to deal with the weasels at the post office in order to acquire stamps, etc.

But, there was a time in which I wrote letters. I actually sat down with pen (preferably of the fountain sort, it just went with the territory) and nice stationery, and you turned wonderful words into prose – often very ‘purple’ prose if it was a love letter. Love letters, sigh. Not in the sand, but on perfumed paper. Love letters that closed (you hoped) with ‘Love’ or even better ‘Love Always’ and then this stuff XXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOO. Man, that was almost as good as sex. In fact, in those days that was about all the carnality a lot of guys got, so it had to do.

And, a body felt obliged to keep letters, to store them away in old shoe-boxes. I still have all the letters sent to me by my steady girlfriend at the end of high school as she carried out her summer job at a resort on Gabriola Island on BC’s coast. I don’t know why I kept them, but I am glad I did. They’re not especially salacious – she wasn’t that kind of girl; well actually she was, but not in her letters – but they’re cherished nevertheless.

I also have letters from later sweeties, and also from male friends, aunts and uncles, my grandfather and many others. They cannot be discarded. I cherish them and the senders who took the trouble to write them. One of my very best friends died in an accident in the spring of 1981. I still have his last letter posted to me while I was living in England for a year. I cherish that letter above all others. It was written only a couple of weeks before his untimely death.

As I say, technology didn’t shoot the messenger, but it changed the messenger. It made all of us lazy seekers of convenience and speed. So yes, I email regularly, and snail-mail virtually not at all. But, I do not text-message, nor do I plan to. I have some standards, and retaining a modicum of literacy is one of those standards.

And, I blog. And my blogs, like so many of yours, keep the letter writing tradition alive. So, there is hope.