The Correspondent

by Virginia Evans

Imagine all that you have said to another, all the commentary you have exchanged with friends over drinks, over the phone with colleagues and distant relatives, all the prattle sent quickly, mindlessly over e-mail, messages typed into your cellular phone, and really, the sum of this interpersonal communication is the substance of your life, relationships being, as we know by now in our old ages, the meat of our lives; but all of that is gone.

if one has committed oneself to the page, the tragedy I’ve just laid out will not apply.

consider a simpler value of the written letter, which is, namely, that reaching out in correspondence is really one of the original forms of civility in the world, the preservation of which has to be of some value we cannot yet see.