|k| clippings: 2015-02-02 — so intimate a thing

Happy InCoWriMo/LetterMo! In case you missed yesterday’s note, I’m giving away folded notecards to celebrate letter writing. To answer a few common questions: 1) I will ship internationally, so if you asked, you shall receive! 2) Each pack comes with one of each design. 3) I haven’t run out yet.

And don’t worry, I won’t focus this heavily on on letters all month!

WORK

Stach halts the progression of his story for a fine essay on the nature of the letter and the epistolary culture of the time. During 1912 at least one hundred letters are written to Felice Bauer in Berlin, who must have felt the burden of response grow heavier by the week. Letters work upon the mind in the absence of the body, whose only presence can be felt in a personalized penmanship or perhaps through a fragrance captured in a kink of the envelope, or absorbed by the paper, now so intimate a thing, since it has been inscribed by a mind the way skin is sometimes caressed by a lover’s fingers. Letters bring news, companionship, business, affection, but also pain. They are full of gossip, mischief, lies, flattery, and similar, though softer, misconstructions. They are not always meant to please, and confessions that wound their writer may wound their reader too.

—William H. Gass
—from Life Sentences: Literary Arguments and Accounts

WORD(S)

epistolary /uh-PIS-tuh-lary/. adjective. Associated with letters or the writing of letters. A work or relationship in the form of letters. From Late Latin epistolarius (of or belonging to letters), from Latin epistola (a letter, a message), and Greek epistole (something sent). Yes, I realize I am stretching for an interesting word fitting today’s theme.

“The doctor’s epistolary style was queer. His syntax was shaky and he was as free with capital letters as a seventeenth-century divine, while in the use of italics he rivalled Queen Victoria.” (George Orwell)

“After completion of laconic epistolary compositions she abandoned the implement of calligraphy in the encaustic pigment, exposed to the corrosive action of copperas, green vitriol and nutgall.” (James Joyce)

WEB

1. “My second Rule is, don’t fill more than a page and a half with apologies for not having written sooner!” → Read Lewis Carroll’s “Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing”

2. “Perhaps that is the way to get handwriting back into our lives—as something which is a pleasure, which is good for us, and which is human in ways not all communication systems manage to be.” → An excerpt from The Missing Ink: The Lost Art of Handwriting by Philip Hensher

3. “Twitter is the contemporary postcard—social updates that are limited by size, but not imagination. For a month, with a billion stamps, our correspondent moved his tweets from the laptop to the post office, and rediscovered the joy of mail.” → “Twitter by Post”

4. Lenka Clayton and Michael Crowe have been working for five years on a project to send “a unique hand-written (or hand-typed) letter to every household in the world.” Whether the enterprise demonstrates an amusingly weak grasp of mathematics or is simply a quixotic piece of performance art, it’s still charming.

5. Today in 1882, author James Joyce is born in Dublin. Best known for his novels—which occupy the end of the spectrum from complex to fiendishly difficult—and his short stories of intense clarity, Joyce was also an avid (and occasionally quite racy) letter writer. I’ve read, and can claim to have understood, all of Joyce’s work except Finnegans Wake, composed in a linguistic concoction of puns, portmanteaus and poeticisms Anthony Burgess called “Eurish” and I call “incomprehensible.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader O. writes: “I adored the Merwin poem. Thank you for including it!” — You’re welcome! Thank you for reading (and re-Tweeting)!

• Reader S. shares: “The recent discussion around semordnilap and palindromes reminded me of this gem from Weird Al.” — Brilliant! How did I miss that until now?

• Reader G., in solidarity: “Enjoyed the poem. But especially enjoyed the famous paintings of mobs of women beating on men. I’m sure they were all cads and thoroughly deserved it thrice over. ;)”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

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