An Epistolary Experiment

Daytalking with How About This's Mark Dykeman via snail mail

“There will always be letters,” I thought.

Then the World Wide Web happened.

Which for me was around the late 1980s, early ’90s. I bought an iMac and got a subscription to Earthlink. I sent emails.

It was a game-changer, of course, as everyone is well aware.

But when I was a kid, well before even my preteens, I loved our family mailbox. The folks often sent me out “to go get the mail”—a task I thoroughly enjoyed. I even put some skin in the game by ordering scientific catalogs, paperbacks and comic books, anything to raise those dopamine levels in my brain so that the very act of cracking open the mailbox was an immediate contact high.

A “letters collage” in process (Photo by StoryShed Media LLC).

Friends and distant family wrote letters: seasonal ones from the grandparents, and later I got into a pen pal phase with mostly young women in Great Britain.

Again, contact highs.

So last fall, when the How About This Substack’s Mark Dykeman and I had exchanges about fountain pens and handwriting, we agreed to experiment by sending each other handwritten letters, just to see how we felt about the process, so long abandoned generally in the culture.

The first letter I received from him was on Nov. 30, 2022: three full pages, handwritten on one-side of each page. I recall seeing the unopened envelope in my letterbox and feeling that odd sense I had when grandparents or distant friends wrote to me in my youth: “Someone is sending you a personal letter!” it nearly screams. It’s a unique sensation.

First letter from Mark, Nov. 30, 2022 (Photo by StoryShed Media).

You’re probably thinking, “Well, what do you write to ‘someone you don’t know’?”

Does it even matter?

Mark’s first letter was friendly and honest—he admitted to just scratching out unintended words rather than starting over with a fresh sheet of paper. Mark lives in Canada, so his letters took about two weeks to reach me, which I assume was the same for my letters (three in total) to him. Like my thoughts on “growing up postal,” he too mused about the past. “Magical times,” he wrote in that first letter, “before I had to worry about receiving bills in the mail.”

I wrote back on Dec. 13, 2022: “Seeing something sent to you personally, written by hand, has the visual appeal of a hug—that hasn’t changed.” However, as I got older (especially learning to typewrite in high school) I fell in love with being about to quickly type out my thoughts and not worry about scrunching up my handwriting until my fingers cramped up. Typing was a form of freedom—like playing a piano—and with the purchase of a new Olivetti electric typewriter, I was ready for the future!

Mark’s second handwritten letter was composed on Dec. 29, 2002, and I received it on Jan. 14, 2023. Another three-pager with delicious details of former letter writing: “…letters I received from family members…the only one that really sticks out is from my grandmother (my father’s mother) who used to send at least one letter per year, if I recall correctly. Sometimes I think she used the letters for expectation setting as much as anything else, like trying to make sure we (my brother and I) were attending church regularly (which we weren’t…). But I remember the plain white stationery she used and the prim, neat handwriting she used. Always blue ink. I’m a black ink person, myself.”

Letter from me to Mark in blue-black fountain pen ink (Photo by StoryShed Media).

Again, I was cast back into my own past—of grandparents’ wishes, church attendance (or lack thereof), expectations and interpersonal family shaming—did you write a thank you letter to your grandparents? Have you done your homework? Did you finish your chores? Are you looking presentable?

Immediately I began to think about social media, the availability of trolling others and using the platforms for shaming and “calling out differences.” It reminded me that gossip is the lowest form of communication, and the ability to muse about “higher things,” might just be the right step up the conversational ladder.

Where, you might be asking, has that gone?

My response to Mark (the date didn’t transfer over to the photocopy I made) came to three pages as well, and I mentioned an old WordPress post about letters my parents wrote to me around my 25th birthday, which I titled “The Birthday Boy.” (I’ll link to the original post here.)

Mark’s last letter in our handwriting experiment was written on March 8, 2023 and I received it on the 23rd of that month. The shortest at one page, he wrote, “this has been a fun exercise and it evoked the feelings I experienced many years ago when I had more regular mail correspondence.”

Is letter writing dead? What do you think? (Photo by StoryShed Media.)

For my part, I made a mental note to compare the Mark I know from his Substack and the Mark I encountered in his handwritten letters—definitely more friendly and personable in the letters, but that’s probably due to handwriting compared to cold typewritten words on a screen.

In the end I’d say we should probably cut most writers that we encounter online a break.

It’s certainly not easy to write for a (largely) unknown audience.