The number of letters mailed has been declining each year as we move to electronic means of communication (U.S. Statistics). I find handwritten letters to be much more personal. But when we do have time to write a letter, get an envelope, and buy postage? And by the time the recipient has received the letter, things have changed. If we write letters that are not about the daily ongoings, but that are about giving advice or explaining something, then we can have letters that are timeless.

It is certainly convenient and fast to send an email, but an email can be diverted to junk mail and ignored or deleted with a click. We live in a physical world and the physical letter will leave a tangible impression on us in a way that an email does not.

C. S. Lewis wrote responses by hand to letters he received from fans. In one of them, he offers practical points about writing. This is a timeless letter in that, although it was addressed to a specific reader at a specific time, its advice holds true even today. The value of the letter is as a means of exchange, the recognition of another person’s thoughts and participating in a dialogue.

How many emails do you receive in a day? And how many of those do you respond to? Often emails today are more about giving information than an interest in communication between two individuals.

It takes time to write a letter. Time that we often say we don’t have. Writing a letter can be a way to slow down and make time for the things that we value.

The letter featured in the image is another handwritten letter by C. S. Lewis to Janet.

Ta-Nehisi Coates framed his non-fiction book Between the World and Me as a long letter to his son. Besides being non-fiction, this letter format gives the novel a personal tone, especially as it is addressed to a loved one. At first, I was uncomfortable with this level of intimacy because I felt like I was prying into another person’s life. At the same time, being first confronted with the straightforward salutation of “Son” I felt distanced because I am not a man and I am not family. As I was reading, I realized that “Son” is not simply Coates’ own son, who is not named until page 68, about half way through the book. “Son” is an address to all black men. It is Coates, a middle-aged black man, speaking to the new black generation about what it was like for him to live as a black body in America and how black bodies are still in danger.

Between the World and Me is gendered because it is written by a father to his son. Although gender does not fall under the scope of the novel, Coates recognizes it.
“The girl from Chicago understood this too, and she understood something more — that all are not equally robbed of their bodies, that the bodies of women are set out for pillage in ways I could never truly know” (65).

The photographs are beautiful and give a raw human quality of a scrapbook or journal that I do not think could be wholly achieved through text alone. In the photos, you see Coates and his family and friends which makes his narrative concrete in a way that bypasses the inherent construct of text.

While the focus of Between the World and Me is race, there is a greater human idea of what the American Dream means and how it influences people, both the oppressors and the oppressed.

My favorite passage from Between the World and Me:
“The Dream thrives on generalization, on limiting the number of possible questions, on privileging immediate answers. The Dream is the enemy of all art, courageous thinking, and honest writing. And it became clear that this was not just for the dreams concocted by Americans to justify themselves but also for the dreams that I had conjured to replace them. I had thought that I must mirror he outside world, create a carbon copy of white claims to civilization. It was beginning to occur to me to question the logic of the claim itself. I had forgotten my own self-interrogations pushed upon me by my mother, or rather I had not yet apprehended their deeper, lifelong meaning. I was only beginning to learn to be wary of my own humanity, of my own hurt and anger—I didn’t yet realize that the boot on your neck is just as likely to make you delusional as it is to ennoble” (50).

1. Blending the new with the familiar
Some books do not simply quote or allude to another work, but create a new version of the story. Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles is one example of young adult fiction that spins off of fairy tales like Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood. These fairy tales are stories that we already enjoy. A spin off story is entertaining in that we are able to connect elements of it to the original and yet feel that the story is fresh with new details.

2. Building off of pre-existing works
Sometimes words from one character reappear in another character’s mouth. In Brave New World, John speaks Miranda’s words from The Tempest “O brave new world that has such people in it.” Hearing the same words but in a different context adds layers of depth. Is John simply another Miranda figure who has been sheltered and is ignorant of the world? Or is the sexual tension with Miranda layered with John’s tension with seeing a civilized society?

3. Connecting individual pieces to the greater world
One of the greatest part of being a writer may be the ability to synthesize ideas and connect works. While a book is a single object, it is never alone because there is a history to it and a context of the culture it is published in. Some works even derive their whole meaning off of references, such as the Epic Rap Battles of History.

Instead of seeing references as an annoyance in that it may cause us to pause and research them if we do not know them, references should be seen as our way of connecting pieces of the world to make sense of it. From history to pop culture, references are everywhere.

Edna O’Brien details the merits of literature to come to the question of whether or not literature is currently dying out. While I do not think literature will ever be dead (the only exception I see being in an apocalypse where there are no longer beings that can create or read literature), I think it is evolving.

O’Brien asks, “Will it [literature] seep into the fabric of social and political thought, will it have its faithful zealots, or will there be a falling away”. With this question, I think we have to ask, does society create literature or does literature influence society? I do not think the answer has to be only one, but that society and literature both influence each other. The way O’Brien has phrased the question, it seems like it is only literature that can influence society. Instead of seeing literature as dying because it is not changing society, we can see it as literature changing and reflecting a society that is changing.

But if Steiner is seeing society as one “in search of easier, bolder distractions and of pleasures less perplexing to the brain,” then it is not so much whether or not literature exists as to the quality of literature. In our fast paced world, with reality TV shows and latest news of celebrities, it seems the hard questions of literature are not being asked. Then is literature degenerating?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote a collection of poems on art of which two sonnets are on his own painting “The Girlhood of Mary Virgin.” Aside from the significance of these works in regard to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, I was fascinated with the combination of two genres that are typically treated separately: visual art and poetry.

Today we are bombarded with images combines with words, but the pictures are the focus and the words are a tagline to accompany the picture rather than a work of art in themselves. A common example is advertisements and memes. Often if you take away the picture, the words do not make sense. Whereas if you take away the words, the picture still communicates a message, though perhaps with a different tint.

The sonnets were said to have been on a piece of paper that was attached to the painting. The painting was reframed in 1864 and Rossetti’s poems were inscribed on the frame (Rossetti Archive). The poems do not serve to simply describe the painting. Instead, the entire piece is a story told in three parts, perhaps on purpose to symbolize the Christian trinity. Each part of the trio can stand alone, but together the poems and painting provide different perspectives and a fuller story.  The poems are descriptions, the first of Mary and the second of the painting though both end with the knowledge that Mary will soon be told that she will bear Jesus Christ.

Although the second sonnet starts explicitly, “These are the symbols,” it does not mention every symbol in the painting, such as the dove, and it does not piece out the meaning of every symbol (l.1) . While the poem notes, “the lily standeth, which/ Is Innocence,” the description is simplistic and does not fully embody the symbol (ll. 8-9). The poems serve to highlight and expand upon points within the painting. The poems are not a translation of the poem. The combination of these three pieces shows an emphasis on deciphering symbols in order to understand a story rather than purely reading through, whether a poem or painting, to get the story. Instead of isolating genres, we can combine them to make new works of art.