Lost in Transition by Erin O’Dwyer
Something is disappearing as the art of letter writing continues to decline, writes Erin O’Dwyer.
THE day after my grandfather Max Gericke died, we found a pile of yellowing letters stuffed in a sandwich bag sitting on top of the rubbish. They begin as every love letter should – ‘‘My dearest . . .’’ – and are addressed in beautiful copperplate hand to my grandmother, Norma Edwards.
The letters date from 1941. It was the year before they married and the year my grandfather travelled between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne for his work. An accountant, he was also a poetry lover and a keen amateur historian. His eloquent ramblings contain remarkable gems about the social fabric of the three cities at that time.
‘‘Practically everyone tries to get a view of the harbour,’’ he writes of Sydney. ‘‘You’d be amazed at the positions some homes are built on. No soil for gardens. And the space for the clothes line has to be cut from rock. Land is a fabulous price too.’’
Some things never change. Neither did my grandfather’s principles. The same musings about truth and beauty and love that he shared with his sweetheart are the same values he upheld until the day he died at 96.
‘‘Many folk accept that after a few years of marriage things will become commonplace,’’ he writes. ‘‘It is expected and therefore it happens. Why should it be expected? Should there be anticipation of closer companionship, deeper affection, absolute trust and harmony, then these qualities will work out in life because effort will be made to realise them.’’
It’s language from a different time. The sentiments are from a different era, too.
Polish thinker Zygmunt Bauman has written that we live in an age of ‘‘liquid love’’. It’s acceptable to dump your lovers via SMS. Or press delete on a matchmaking website. Virtual relationships set the pace of our love affairs. The demise of the hand-written love letter is symptomatic. Real seduction, says Dr Paolo Bartoloni, is disappearing because society is too impatient. The lecturer in comparative literary studies at Sydney University says making love is an act of
mutual production. But it requires time and commitment.
‘‘We’re experiencing today a gradual
shift from production to consumption,’’ he
says, ‘‘which has enormous implications for
our ways of relating with others.’’
Essentially, we’re too busy loving
ourselves to actually ‘‘make love’’ with a
partner. Not that he believes it is the end of
love – just that the
way we love is changing.
And the new
language of love – R
U free 4 dinner? –
slips in cosily beside
the language of the
new economy.
‘‘In today’s society,
the capital is impatient,
and love is impatient,
too,’’ he says. ‘‘There is
no time for long and
elaborate letters, there
is no time for sharing
and there is no time for seduction.’’
Sydney artist Andrew Newman is also
interested in the changing language of love.
‘‘It’s maybe a little more difficult to
romanticise these forms but I think over
time that an SMS message is as romantic as
a crumply note left under the door.’’
Newman is completing a masters on the
subject at the Sydney College of Arts. He was
16 when he found the wartime correspondence
of his grandparents tied with twine,
stuffed in a biscuit tin and hidden in the
back of the kitchen dresser. ‘‘It was like finding
treasure,’’ Newman says.
Captain Sidney Conlon and his wife Thora
had been married only a year when World
War II broke out. For five years, their marriage
was conducted entirely by love letter.
‘‘They talked about this grand love, this
great love,’’ Newman says. ‘‘It was an
abstract notion. They weren’t necessarily
writing of their love. Their writing to each
other was love.’’
Most people agree that email is good news
for the art of letter writing. Online
communities keep us in touch in ‘‘real time’’,
in ways inconceivable even a decade ago.
But what of the handwritten letter that
bears the lovers’ mark – the recognisable
script, the unusual flairs, the ability to transport
you elsewhere in time?
Some companies create electronic fonts that
mimic a person’s own handwriting. Surely this
is cheating. And who keeps emails anyway?
‘‘I have,’’ says Dominic Pettman, an
Australian lecturing in cultural studies and
media at New School for Liberal Arts in New
York City. ‘‘Obsessively, I’ve saved every email
I’ve ever sent or received over the past 14
years. And while I very rarely re-read them,
they are there patiently waiting to be clicked
on once again.’’ But the author of Retrofitting
Eros For The Information Age says email is
even for oldies these days. Generation Y only
communicates via blogs, MySpace and
internet messaging. ‘‘Anything with vowels is
considered too gushy and gauche,’’ he says.
‘‘Teenagers are being ‘creeped out’ by
anyone trying to express themselves in an
extended, articulate way.
‘‘Handwritten letters are already evaporating
from the consciousness of younger
generations. But there may be a lesson to be
learned in the fact that vinyl records are now
outselling CDs. Certain media come back
into vogue due to the powers of nostalgia.’’
I’m not so sure. I once had a love affair with an English literature student. He counted the ravishing Chilean poet Pablo Neruda among his heroes but the best I got was an inbox of one-line emails. And a scrawled note that read: ‘‘Here’s the rent, take care and thanks for being so wonderful.’’