How long has it been since you wrote a letter or received one? Very long is what I think. When I was young, I used to look forward to my grandfather's letters. They inevitably contained a cheat sheet for an upcoming essay or elocution contest. He also sent me pictures for my favourite academic activity, making the fattest prettiest geography record book. I know, I am such a nerd. I was also fascinated by Nehru's book, Letters from a father to a daughter. It goes through prehistory, the industrial revolution all the way until colonial India. That book makes you wish that somebody would write to you like that. This is not an essay in defense of handwritten letters, I like them as much as the next person, but I type faster than I write. All I am defending is a good long email. We all instant message, WhatsApp, we share information in small units and expect instant reactions. It is convenient and wonderful that we can share our lives with people we care about. But we tend tp lose sight of some special quirks that communication should have.
A letter contains a lot of its writer, consciously or unconsciously. That' s the best part of a letter. It conveys a feeling, a tone, sometimes things that you never meant to convey at all. I have often had this argument that writing is a projection and not the truth of the author. It might be true. But sometimes reading between the lines tells you much of things left unwritten. I find it difficult to understand even this, because most of the time my writing sounds exactly like me- pedantic, opinionated and with more asides than topics of conversation. While I don't write rude emails, I often have been told that I sound angry. Lots of times I do mean it, rest of the time even when I am writing a forced polite reply, the anger seeps into what I am trying to say. See what I mean about conveying things the author doesn't mean.
I have always loved epistolatory novels. I think they make great serial stories and keep you waiting for the next installment. Some of my top favorites are Daddy Long Legs, Dear Enemy, Anne of Windy Willows. All of these are romances. Daddy Long Legs is a budding college girl romance. It's a one-sided communication. That's what is great about letters right now, they are sort of unconditional. You keep it open so the other person can decide how they want to respond. Dear Enemy is a beautiful documentation of escalating clashes of opinion, wills and theories culminating in a romance. Anne writes to her fiance while she waits to get married. The book is tilled with newsy prosy letters you wish you could write. I recently re read one of mu other favorites, The Guernsey Potato Peel Pie and Literary Society. Filled with different voices and styles blending to form a single story, it could be a manual for letter writing.
For all my enthusiasm on writing letters, I become rather stilted when I write a letter. I write 3 word sentences. I am funny unless I try to be funny. If I try, it makes bad reading. So if I want to write a great epistolatory novel some day, I need oodles of practice writing letters.
