Finding Wisdom in the Letters of Aging Writers

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/finding-wisdom-in-the-letters-of-aging-writers-samuel-beckett-saul-bellow-elizabeth-bishop/510140/?single_page=true

by diodorus • 10 years ago

41 3 10 years ago

theatlantic.com

tapan_k• 10 years ago

This year saw the publication of the fourth and final volume of Samuel Beckett’s letters, The Letters of Samuel Beckett: 1966-1989, representing his correspondence from the age of 60 to his death at the age of 83.

History has many examples of beautiful revelations from letters written by famous people. I have to wonder what is a modern equivalent of this phenomenon. People seldom write letters these days, leave alone keep a copy for posterity. Emails are private, and are unlikely to be opened up for the general public after the owner is gone. The closest something else gets to this is bloging. However, the author is cognizant of the fact that she is writing for public, while a letter is intended to be read by the recipient alone, thereby influencing the tone accordingly. Is there a way for the future generations to ever learn from the personal message exchanges of today's greats?

logicallee• 10 years ago

My personal reaction when I first read about the revelations of the scope of private email and chat, "every keystroke, know what you are thinking before you do" collection by spy agencies was: wow. This shitstorm is like Mount Vesuvius and the world's mails are Pompeii.

As everyone knows, Pompeii was a thriving Roman city that was instantly buried under volcanic ash by Mt. Vesuvius, in a very dramatic natural disaster. But it is also a fertile and excellent historical snapshot of people's lives at that time - historians got to see people frozen in time doing their daily activities. Juvenile graffiti in classrooms and on the city walls. Everything. It is sooooo useful historically, despite being a fatal natural disaster.

Likewise I thought that the public revelations of how much state agencies collected from unsuspecting email users was like a natural disaster, that removed people's trust.

But I also thought that it would be sooooo cool if in 2000 years historians got that record. (I think it would be cool for various reasons that I don't want to get into.)

While perhaps it is good if these collections stop, I hope that future generations will have complete access to that data store (for example, that it is not deleted or made inaccessible, like the Library of Alexandria.)

On the much shorter term, one or two decades, though, you are right - it is very unlikely for, say, Google to release the archived emails of someone who died 20 or 30 years ago... And of course it is literally state agencies' job to say they don't even have it. (And they should act like that in every way, it literally shouldn't make any difference to anyone whether they write privately or speak in person, etc. Nobody wants to live in a surveillance state.)

Still, Google does have that information and I am sure their EULA says they can do whatever they want with it (they're still doing the don't be evil thing, right?) so it's just a question of whether they would/should do things like release some part of famous dead people's emails (perhaps to historians, who can be sensitive to their legacies.)

Gobiel• 10 years ago

The tone of letters does allow for a more personal and spiritual take on what is said. As if you were heeding advice from a more experienced close friend of yours.

More reading: Letters to a Young Poet Moral Letters to Lucilius

Finding Wisdom in the Letters of Aging Writers

Related Stories