by Biblioboy, 6 August 2006

In today’s email- and text-message-besotted world, sometimes I reflect upon the demise of the lost art of letter-writing.

Once upon a time, I used to actually write (yes, with a pen on paper!) letters to people and enjoyed the surprise of actually receiving these missives from the mailman; these days, even holiday postcards seem such an unusual event, they are almost causes for celebration!

Letters, by their very nature, are different as a medium of communication, from email and text messaging. For one thing, they encourage actual serious thought during composition, for another, they are limited in space (anyone old enough to recall those flimsy things called aerogrammes?) and also in the effort required to actually put pen or pencil to paper. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the gaps between sending and receiving a reply are long and require patience - something almost alien to our current time-obsessed society.

Instant gratification letters are not.

Helene Hanff, an American writer of children’s books, TV screenplays, articles for the New Yorker and a serious bibliophile, wrote a series of letters in the 1950s to Frank Doel, an Irish manager of a small specialist bookstore in London.

These letters were published in 1970 as “84, Charing Cross Road” (the address of Marks and Co., the bookstore). They are not love letters but rather something even more precious than evanescent passion - a record of a long, lasting, deep friendship between 2 people who never met, over a period of perhaps 20 years. A meeting of minds brought together by the love of rare and obscure books, the letters chronicle the highs and lows of 2 close friends over time, with the net extending to various others, such as Frank’s bookstore assistant, and Helene’s friends who visit the bookstore in proxy (as a struggling writer in New York, she could never afford to travel to London).

Reading something as personal as someone else’s private correspondence, as well as all that is implied and not said (a lost art today it often seems!) between the lines of the remarkably concise letters, makes the experience somehow utterly personal, penetrating our usual mask towards strangers into our hearts. By the end, we know and care deeply about these people, in a deep, lump-in-throat way.

As an aside, this lovely little book (which I found in a local 2nd-hand bookstore frequented by young students), also chronicles the ups and downs of a type of store close to my own heart - the dying breed of small, specialist bookstores which once used to flourish in literate cities but is now seriously endangered and nearly extinct species under the onslaught of large chains and web-commerce.

I love books and bookstores. And I treasure my friends. “84, Charing Cross Road” is a marvel - a record of both.

Signing off,
Biblioboy