Two days ago Charlotte Higgins wrote a very interesting post on The Guardian's Culture Blog on the Lost Art of Letter-Writting which started with a question: As books on handwriting, letter-writing and paper are published, are ready to fall back in love with slow communication?
Noticing 3 books published this fall ( Philip Hensher's The Missing Ink; Ian Sansom'sPaper; and John O'Connell's For the Love of Letters) on 3 related topics: handwriting, letter and paper, she suggested that more than a drifting away of writing, this could suggest a revival of it. I would agree on the revival of writing as a modality, although I'm less certain about the handwriting aspect of it. After reading Higgins' post, I thought of 3 very dear friends and thought of writing to them... and I ended up sending a long email to one. I hope to write to the two others soon. I know that if I were to write them a letter, they might never receive it... Yet, I enjoyed the email correspondence that I have with them and instead of boxes where I used to keep letters, I have folders in which I keep email correspondences. Yet, I might give it a try and send them letters this weekend.
I found particularly interesting though the slow pace associated to letter writing and the potential for reflection and creativity. I love this beautiful excerpt mentioned by Higgins, a quote from a great piece by Catherine Field in the New York Times:
A good handwritten letter is a creative act, and not just because it is a visual and tactile pleasure. It is a deliberate act of exposure, a form of vulnerability, because handwriting opens a window on the soul in a way that cyber communication can never do. You savor their arrival and later take care to place them in a box for safe keeping.
Beyond the specific genre discussed by Catherine Field and the role of the materiality of writing in allowing a dialogue, I would like to emphasize the creative act of writing as a modality.
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