Books and Letters: You gotta have style

It makes me very sad when I go into Barnes & Noble and see more then half the people there at the Starbucks cafe. People tapping away at their laptops, students getting ready for exams and girls in groups with a stack of magazines poring over the latest news about The Jonas Brothers. Don’t get me wrong, now, I suppose if that’s what you like and that’s what makes you most happy, then I can’t really judge you. But as I walk through the aisles and aisles of books, I see no one peering over Dumas, no one turning the pages of a Nieztsche, no one smiling over John Updike’s humor! Of course, there’s the occasional old fellow I see trying to find which Tom Clancy novel he hasn’t read yet. Or the high school teenager being dragged over to the “Required Reading” table by his mother or father. Or the elderly lady going through scores of cookbooks and Martha Stewart magazines and do-it-yourselves. My heart grows light when I see the mother with the stroller – a baby in the back carriage, a toddler in the front – and she rolls them over to the children’s section to regale them with tales of Thomas The Tank Engine or Winnie The Pooh. I smile and hope that the mother will only continue to nurture them with tales once told to me. So to me, there is that glimmer of hope that the act of reading will not die.

But another form of reading has died, it is virtually unspoken of and the act of doing it is “out of style.” This has saddened me the most. I think what brought it up was my recent interest in the John Adams biography by David McCullough, which a friend gave to me and suggested I read. With that began my fascination with letters and in the fashion they were written. The letters to Abigail Adams from John Adams almost make my heart melt. Men were so good with words then. . .And now, all men do is grunt. Words are so important, they’re how we communicate, they’re how we respond, they’re how we feel. And so I applaud any writer who publishes a book, good or bad! My fascination with letters grew even more so when I discovered that the letter in the movie “Immortal Beloved” was a real letter. The letter itself actually three letters that dated back to when Beethoven had an affair with a married woman.

These days when people actually do “write,” it’s always in e-mail or text message, and when we do THAT, we hardly make the effort to write each word out. Our “you” becomes “u,” our “for” becomes “4.” Our “later” becomes “ttyl.” I admit I have fallen victim to this. There are times when laziness has struck me and I feel no need to make the effort. But what is with the laziness? I don’t understand why we have succumbed to this. We no longer put emphasis on words and their meanings. One can say so much in a letter it’s almost beautiful I think.

So I propose this to everyone reading this. Write me a letter and I will write back. I will take the time to read each and every single letter and write back to every single one of you fellows. Then after having written back, I will then post everyones address up here and everyone will write letters to everyone else. (With the permission of the recipients of course.)

Here is my address: 913 E 36TH ST Long Beach, Ca, 90807

Thank you all :]