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.’’