I
feel compelled to jump on a bandwagon here concerning an interesting
book, Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience.
It's been all over facebook and other spots on the web, most recently
because of one of its featured letters, which was written by J.R.R.
Tolkien, in 1938, to a publisher (Rütten
& Loening) in response to a query
concerning his book, The Lord of the Rings. The
publisher wanted to buy German rights, but felt obliged (since it was 1938) to enquire
whether Tolkien was a member of the Aryan race. The letter quoted was supposed to have
been the less diplomatic
of the two that Tolkien drafted – a fact that I find charming,
because it seems quite restrained to me.
Here
is a partial quote from Tolkien's letter: I
am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am
aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any
related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring
whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I
appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.
I'm
going to go out on a limb and assume that this was not the response
the publisher was hoping for. I'm curious to know what the second
draft said. I think I'm going to have to add Letters of
Note to my bookshelf. It will
stand with similar collections. One of the best ways to study
history is to read letters written by the people who lived through
it.
But
our part of history isn't documented that way. We write emails and
post comments on social media, many of which have to be less than (x)
characters. We may receive
eloquent emails from brilliant people: writers, artists, scientists,
etc. But the emails that are preserved are the ones from corrupt
politicians and businessmen.
I
suppose we can argue that our electronic brand of correspondence is
in its infancy, and many things could happen to change it. Perhaps
it will even be discarded as the social networking sites become too
commercialized and controlled. Instant communication is necessary in
a society where business is booming and many things have to happen
quickly, but we've reached a point where economies are stagnant,
resources are strained, and underemployment is the new norm. Our
philosophy of tearing up the landscape and tearing out our hair to
produce stuff and ship it out as quickly as possible doesn't resonate
with young people. And their children
may feel that constantly talking to each other on Twitter is old
fashioned.
That
doesn't mean they'll sit down and write letters to each other. I
think if we wanted them to do that, we'd have to insist that schools
begin to teach the art of letter-writing from kindergarten through
high school. At this point, we don't fund or staff them well enough
even to teach basic English, math, and science, and curriculums are under
attack from legislatures who are hostile to education in general.
Ironically,
this is just the sort of historical event that could be
well-documented through letters.
Since
we don't have letters to document our age, I'll have to make do with
doodles by Ernest Hogan to illustrate this post. He's out of town,
at U.C. Riverside, talking about Latino SciFi with other
chicanonauts. While he's gone, I'm stealing his art and eating all
the ice cream . . .
