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The Hand-Written Letter

By Peter Lloyd

I sent hand-written letters to several colleagues at a digital marketing agency. None of them read my missives. The letters arrived but languished in mailroom pigeon holes. “I don't ever go get my snail-mail,” one of my addressees explained, when I asked him if he had received my traditional letter. I meant for it to stand out from all the electronic messages I know he receives.

When anyone bemoans the death of letter writing, perhaps I should direct the conversation to letter reading. Who reads them? Every picture on Facebook not only tells so much more but involves random comments and clicks of appreciation. Letters may prove more thoughtful and intimate, but it's stimulation variety we seem to crave today.

Speaking to me about his seminal role in the invention of the earliest chat applications for CompuServe—remember them?—the developer recalled the debate about whether or not to offer users the ability to save their floods of words. “Why would anyone want to save such conversations?” he asked. I still don't know why, but many people do.

In The Death of Letter-Writing, Mason Currey wonders whether or not anyone will want to read someday the collected emails of anyone as we do the collected letters of Saul Bellow or William Styron. His essay in the New York Times describes the letter-writing preference and habits of Cynthia Ozick, Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, Iris Murdoch, H. L. Mencken, Thomas Mann, and Charles Darwin.

Certainly people with whom you'd care to spend reading time still populate the earth. But would you sit down and read their letters?

In 2007 designer Craig Oldham launched The Hand-Written Letter Project by asking colleagues to write him hand-written letters. The enlightening results live online and seem to have turned into an exhibition. Is the art already museum-ready?

See also:
Peter Lloyd is known around his home as The Amazing Fix-It Dad. He and his family live in a restored Queen Anne Victorian house in the historic Mansion Hill district of Newport, Kentucky.

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