On Willa Cather’s birthday
Willa Cather was born on this day in 1873. From a letter to William Lyon Phelps, critic and professor, May 29, 1943. Phelps has sent along...
Orange Crate Art
“Letters! Actual Letters!”
The latest episode of This American Life is all about real mail: “Letters! Actual Letters!” With enough human interest to fill a relay box.
“You can beat it just like I did”
From Letters of Note, a letter to an eight-grader from Joe Biden. Human kindness abounding.
Fran Lebowitz at the Morgan Library
“When you look at manuscripts or letters and they’re written in the hand of the writer, you are closer to that writer, you’re closer to the person”
“This is not a letter”
From Katherine Mansfield.
Mailing a letter
Nabokov’s narrator mails a letter.
Epistolary Fritzi
“The secret to having a penpal is to avoid getting bogged down with responding to every small comment they make in their letter. If you do, you’ll just spend the whole letter recapping what they sent you.”
Wind the clock
Here’s a letter from E.B. White to, it would seem, a one-off correspondent in despair — despair over the state of the world, I would guess.
Thank you
“Do thank-you notes still matter?” The New York Times says “Yes.”
A lost art
“I thought letter writing was a lost art, like steer milking.”
Letterlocking
A way to keep your correspondence confidential.
A letter from Oliver Sacks
To Austin Kleon. And it’s handwritten. Bonuses: the note-taking effort that prompted the letter, and a tour of Sacks’s desk.
Then, Voyager
A complete kit for writing V-Mail, with everything but fountain pen and mechanical pencil: ink, leads, stationery, pen wiper, calendar, ruler, and instructions for pen care.
“Write that letter now”
A sign on a wall in a movie flophouse.
“Free Letters”
The New York Times reports on a theater professor’s COVID-era letter-writing service.
“My dear Mr. Cleaver”
Uh-oh, it’s a letter from the principal.
Mail, real mail
The New York Times reports on snail mail in the time of the coronavirus.
Letters, now
In the time of the coronavirus, Lynell George suggests writing letters.
Add some letters to your day
The USPS wants you to write letters.
“Dear Mrs. Mermet”
Excerpts from Robert Walser’s letters. Starts weird, gets weirder fast.
Tunes, looney
“You showed no remorse, Charlie Brown, no capacity for self-reflection!”
Willie Perdomo on writing letters
“Letters are where we argue, say goodbye, dream, fail, forgive, and tell our secrets, and send regrets. We can't filter our lives or curate our feeds in letters. Letters are where we attempt to tell the truth and wait.”
“Twelve chatty letters”
Cell-phone outage in Dingburg, but Zippy is quite at home with the printed (or handwritten) page.
Letterheads
etterheads dig letterheads. Letterhead Steven Heller offers his confessions — with samples.
Flee — it’s InCoWriMo!
It’s International Correspondence Writing Month. With postcards reading “Flee — all is revealed!”
Bush to Clinton
The note that George H.W. Bush left for Bill Clinton seems like an artifact from a lost America.
Postage due
From Zippy: where do you put the stamp? Inside or outside the envelope?
Solitude and good company
A Famous Quote, not from Lord Byron.
Eberhard Faber letterhead
Sean at Blackwing Pages and Contrapuntalism passed on this scan of the Eberhard Faber letterhead, complete with telephone exchange name, cable address, diamond star trademark, and two-digit postal code. And trailing clouds of graphite, a bright, sharp no. 2 Mongol.
Proust’s letters online
By Nov. 11, 2018.