Dear Dr. Pockless,

Please forgive the use of a postcard, rather than a true letter, but I expect that this missive will be short, and I have something of a stockpile of these cards. I digress, more on that later.

I feel that you were somewhat hasty in your dismissal of Mr. Wingman’s theme of the physicality of letters. Surely the physical manifestation of the words is an important part of the letter experience? Many, dare I say most, books are written on word processors these days, yet the printing of those words onto thinly-sliced dead tree adds so much value to the paragraphs and sentences. In addition to being able to swat flies, press flowers, and fill up unused shelf space.

Then there is the increase in enjoyment on the part of the writer of the letter. Am I the only one to revel in the tactile pleasure of the jet black ink flowing from my fountain pen onto heavy cream parchment? I would venture that the feeling would manifest itself in the prose, thus providing some of the extra quality which you rightly identify in the handwritten letter.

Sorry, I’m running out of space, so I must go. Having a lovely time.

Wish you were here. Ade.

Dear Karen,
Thank you for your last letter. It was greatly appreciated. Though it is tempting to reminisce about our past correspondence in more detail, I am aware of an audience also looking over your shoulder who might not be quite so fascinated about the pleasures of stolen hotel stationary.
You are overly harsh on yourself when you write:

My early weblogs were written for an audience of two […] They were rubbish, which disproves your theory about knowing your reader, don’t you think?

Six sides of A4 worth of literary merit is not to be snorted at, and it is presumably on account of those six sides that I remember enjoying it more than you perhaps realise.
I’ll allow that the tabloid remark sounded harsh, and even that I may have taken Lieut. Moth’s words out of context. It was flattering to think that Pockless was a broadsheet to your tabloid, but it would be for entirely the wrong reasons. His point was that he didn’t read Pockless, where as the posts on Uborka fit more comfortably into his working day. He doubtless finds them more entertaining too. Obviously I quoted him because I knew it would provoke some sort of response.
I really must get on,
Yours superfluously,
Doctor Pockless
Apprentice Toe Surgeon & Man of Letters
***
Dear Mr. Wingman,
Your letter of yesterday was a pleasant surprise. There is indeed much to be said for the physicality of letters. The gesture must be taken into account, but I would not rush to claim this was the only value of letter writing. Inevitably the package instills yet more delight than the slim envelope – I too was a fervent compiler of cassettes. Making CD compilations never really caught on for me, but I suspect that this is more a generational thing. Were I a decade younger or more, I think I would have embraced the possibilities inherent in CD compilations.
But my principle concern is the difference in what you actually write.
Finally, I must respond to your challenge. If anyone wishes to rise to it, I’m willing to make my postal address available, but I suspect that we will not complete our correspondence in time to post the results before Friday cocktails. I will however, reply in the form of a letter posted here to anyone who cares to post a letter addressed to me.
I don’t think I’ve really added anything to the discussion today, but that’s never stopped me before.
Yours inordinately,
Doctor Pockless
Discredited Fencing Instructor & Man of Letters

Dear Doctor Pockless,
I am forced to agree with your recent thoughts on letters- I too have noticed a severe drop-off in my own letter output. I attribute this mainly to the fact that my hand-writing, never good at the best of times, has deteriorated to the point where even I can no longer read it. So now all my writing is done into a computer, and once in digital form, sure, I could print it and mail it, but isn’t it just so much easier to hit ‘send’? I still take the time to write hand-written letters, but I somehow suspect their recipients appreciate them as a gesture, as opposed to something they can actually read and comprehend.
And that’s the important thing, isn’t it? The gesture. Seeing a little envelope with your name on it when you open the door, sensing the weight, breaking out your letter-opener that you only ever use for miniature mock sword-fights, the feel of the paper in your hands, looking at the script and marvelling: “The person who wrote this held this paper! As my eyes read, their pen wrote.” And not only that, they went to the post office and paid for a stamp, too. It’s that feeling that we’re missing, not the content.
Similarly, CDs have destroyed the Dan-mixed-tape. I used to make at least one of these a month and send it to a friend- not just a collection of songs, but me, in-between the songs, chatting about what I was doing, getting my friends to say hi, playing samples of movies and shows that I liked. Then I decided to ‘lift my game up’ and shift to CD. What a disaster. Dividing what used to be a random mess into the ordered track-by-track structure of a CD completely destroyed the spontaneity of mix- it all became about what sounded better, track 7 needs to be the best, have to follow the rules from High Fidelity. And don’t get me wrong, when I make a mixed CD, it still kicks ass, but it’s not nearly the creative and haphazard endeavour my tapes used to be.

As our lives become more and more digital (e-mails instead of letters, CDs instead of tapes, blogs instead of diaries), there are tremendous advantages in speed- trying to use as little of our precious time commodity as possible. But perhaps the time you spend on creating something reflects to the person you are creating it for just how much you care, what you are willing to spend to give them that special feeling you get when opening a real live letter- which is why I don’t think you should have allowed your responses to be here on Uborka (these aren’t letters!), but through your mailbox. Now there’s a challenge.
d

—–Original Message—–
From: Joe Maloney (7481)
Sent: 22 July 2004 15:35
To: Nicholls, Daniel X
Subject: RE: offensive
yes. The school therapist in my elementary school was very keen on writing letters to people that you didn’t intend to send, as a way to organize your thoughts.
—–Original Message—–
From: Nicholls, Daniel X
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2004 10:36 AM
To: Joe Maloney (7481)
Subject: RE: offensive
Yeah, once when I was going out with Samara, she like, ah, her ex-boyfriend had died in a motorcycle accident, and she went on about him a fair bit, and I once suggested that to her, that she write him a letter saying how she felt, and she looked at me and said (quite seriously!): “He’s DEAD, Dan, he can’t receive letters!”
Oy.
—–Original Message—–
From: Joe Maloney (7481)
Sent: 22 July 2004 15:35
To: Nicholls, Daniel X
Subject: RE: offensive
that, I’m sorry, that really is very funny.

Dear Uborkites,

I am disappointed that none of you have yet taken up my challenge from yesterday. Perhaps it was my disagreeable humour. Or was it that you too had to pick up the kids from school? Come on now, it was Sunday.

Since none saw fit to even boo me off the letterbox, I have no choice but to continue my correspondence alone with some imaginary über-borkite*, a manifestation of my entire readership. But one of the virtues of the letter is surely knowing your audience.

I had planned to address my next letter to the Uborkite bold enough to respond. The advantage of letter writing is that one usually has a single reader in mind, and therefore writes in a voice suited to the intended recipient. Thus, when writing to a literary friend who likes to pontificate unhindered I might adopt a different tone to that used when writing to thank my grandfather for a 2 pound Boots token. There is one Uborkite in particular who has previously been the recipient of my letters, and that is Karen. Thankfully she falls closer to the unhindered pontification end of the spectrum than the thanks for the shaving balm.

She will vouch for the frequency with which I used to write, as I will vouch for hers. But I would expect that she’d also admit that we both used to write letters of greater depth and clarity than we are wont to do today. I’m not saying that we wrote anything that will be studied by later generations, but there must have been passages of flair in both our missives. This is because we took time over our leters and we knew our audience.

The writer Kurt Vonnegut says that the moment when he got to grips with writing was the moment when he realised who he was writing for. He writes his novels with his sister in mind as his ideal reader. The reason so many people besides his sister can enjoy his novels is first because he writes with the confidence of a man who knows his readership, and second because his books are published by the likes of Vintage and Bantam Doubleday Dell with worldwide distribution deals.

Assure yourself of the first, and the latter will follow!

This brings me to an interesting point that arose in discussion with a friend and former-colleague whom I have previously referred to as Flight Lieutenant Moth. F. L. Moth reads both Uborka and Pockless, although he seldom comments. When commenting on Pockless he invariably does so in the guise of an elderly woman, which suggests to me that he would have been an ideal candidate for last week’s theme. I deeply regret that he does not make his presense felt more frequently, but the chances are that he will not have read this far down the page for reasons that I shall arrive at presently.

He described the difference between Pockless and Uborka as that between a broadsheet and a tabloid. He cannot be bothered to read the former because the posts are long and tend to go on a bit. Uborka, on the other hand is less obscure, speaks to a wider audience and prone to a highly enjoyable type of sensationalism. This is nothing to be ashamed of. Uborka, like Vonnegut, reaches a wider audience because its writers know their audience. It is written for Uborkites by Uborkites, and as a result, one does not have to be an Uborkite to enjoy it. One merely needs to have similar tastes. Like Vonnegut’s sister. Or mine.

This exposes a weakness in Pockless I’m only too aware of. My audience is me. Until I can be assured of a single audience other than myself it shall lack the focus of great writing. In the mean time, one hopes you’ll enjoy the pictures. As I told Uborka Pete, the words are just padding for the pictures anyway.

So, Uborkite, for whom do you write?

Yours stertorously,

Doctor Pockless
Inglorious Grammarian & Man of Letters

*PS. For those of you interested, the über-borkite is approximately 5 foot 9 inches tall and of indeterminate gender, although with a slight (and unfortunate) male bias. S/he wears exquisite shoes, but is not nearly as kinky as we were at first led to believe, and likes a drink, especially on Friday. His/her favourite colour is green. Since I am reasonably confident that this is not you, we may here see the folly of statistics in action.

Dear Uborkites,
Given that you are all to some extent or another committed writers, I am aware that I am preaching to the converted. Nevertheless, the ill about which I intend to write inflicts even myself. Since “letters” are this week’s theme, I think it’s reasonable that we address the apparent fact that letter-writing is a dying Art.
There was a time when I wrote letters on a daily basis. Indeed there were certain periods of my life when I would say that my correspondence represented the peak of my literary achievements. That is certainly not so today.
I have been able to isolate two causes in particular, one general, and one specific. The general cause is the advent of electronic mass-communication, specifically in the form of email, but also instant messengers and forums. At the height of my epistolary output the only means of communication available to me, besides the telephone, was postal. Since I abhor the former means of communication, it is safe to say that it was the only means I used except in circumstances where urgent arrangements needed to be made.
The specific cause is lack of time. Letter writing is time-consuming. Time, like most of the world’s natural resources, is running out, and only the most far-sighted scientists are dedicating themselves to the discovery of new sources of temporal relief. Inevitably, however, due to external commitments, like nipping down to the shop to buy a loaf of bread, picking up the kids after school, and watching television, these scientists just never get round to finishing the job.
Letter writing is slow. They take time to write, and time to reach their recipients. And yet I believe they are a superior form to the email. Of course there is nothing whatsoever to prevent one from writing the exact same words in an email as one does in a letter. But I suspect that few of you would deny that for the most part you do not. I am not so old-fashioned that I believe that simply because a form is new it is necessarily bad, and it is not my intention to proove emails to be a lesser form. No doubt there is a certain amount of space to be duely committed to the study of what is good in electronic mail (and speaking from a literary point of view, I mean besides the fact that they are quicker). My point here is that for all their virtues, email cannot but be held responsible for the diminishing Art of letter writing.
Why is this a loss to be mourned? I can think of more reasons than I have time to expound here (we’re out of bread), but I think few can deny the value to history of the correspondence between great men and women of letters. Will the collected email correspondence between great thinkers eventually comprise future publications indispensable to humanity? Quite possibly. But most will be deleted, and many will lack the exhaustive detail of great letter writing.
Now that I have started I think of more and more I mean to say, but we have all week, dear readers. With this, the opening letter in my correspondence with the Uborkites, I hope to raise some heckles and hear what you have to say in response. My comments box is, however, closed. If you wish to respond, I will accept your answers by means of a letter, posted here.
Yours distensibly,
Doctor Pockless
Disagreeable Humourist & Man of Letters