Have I Got a Deal for You!

Yesterday I finished reading The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby. It took about twice as long to read as a book of its length normally would, because of the wealth of history and detail, and the power of the arguments.

Ms Jacoby articulately traces the history of America's tendency toward "anti-intellectualism," and its effect on our history, culture, and international relations. Stiff-necked "conservatives" and ivory-tower "liberals" are equally pilloried for their efforts to dumb down American education. She looks at educational fads (like the "Baby Einstein" DVD sets), the pernicious effect of video and the Internet on reading, and the decline of American's skills in math, geography, reading, writing, and conversation. And she doesn't think much of blogging as a substitute for any of these.

One of her most devastating arguments deals with the decline of writing in general, and the art of writing letters in particular. She writes,

"Future historians will look in vain for the kinds of letters that passed between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson; Gustave Flaubert and George Sand; Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann; Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy; Lord Byron and everyone in his world. They will look in vain for traces of an intellectual life in which reading, writing, and conversing face-to-face are seamlessly linked in a way that facilitates deep connections among people who love ideas."

I have written here often enough about my love of writing letters, and about how little of it I do any more. Katherine can tell you that my once-awesome correspondence has been reduced in most cases to a single, multi-page, individualized Christmas letter that goes out only to about a dozen of my oldest and closest friends. At one time, I was churning out long, chatty letters to my friends and relatives at the rate of about five or six a week...and now it's down to one a year at Christmas. I could blame lack of time (which is true), and lack of feedback (since most people love receiving letters, but don't like answering them), but those are just evasions. The simple truth is that I've gotten lazy.

And so here's the deal I have for my blogging friends...

The first five of you who e-mail your snail-mail address to me (bilbo_the_blogger - at symbol - yahoo.com) will receive a personal, hand-written letter from yours truly, delivered directly to your mailbox by a real, uniformed letter carrier (we used to call them mailmen in a less gender-sensitive time). There's a catch, though: you have to promise to write back. You also have to promise to accept the fact that my handwriting is usually excellent at the top of the first page, but gets worse as it goes along.

Maybe together we can ensure that when Susan Jacoby issues a future reprint of her book, she can point to us as one small spark that tried to rekindle the dying art of correspondence. It was, after all, John Steinbeck who once began a letter to a friend with, "I have owed you this letter for a very long time, but my fingers have avoided the pencil as if it were an old and poisoned tool."

I have plenty of ink and lots of paper. Let's get started.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo