I noticed something today while reading Jonathan Franzen’s “How to Be Alone.” Specifically, I was reading his essay “My Father’s Brain.”
I realized that email has resurrected the old fashioned tradition of letter writing. Specifically, written correspondence versus verbal correspondence. We’re shooting off thoughts and ideas faster than our fingers can keep up. We’re documenting history, so long as our hard drives and inboxes have enough space.
But is this making us better writers? Are we more literal because we’re writing more, and, as a result, reading more? Part of me says yes, because people can think more before writing than before speaking. We have time to form sentences and paragraphs, using words we might not use in verbal communication.
Another part of me says no, because although we can think more before writing, we don’t all of the time. The send button is too close, too easy to click, too easy to deliver our thoughts immediately and, in turn, receive feedback from the recipient.
But sometimes that feedback doesn’t arrive while we remain seated at our keyboards, waiting with bated breath the response, the chime indicating new mail, the validation that our thoughts matter, that our ideas matter, that our questions matter, that our observations matter, that we matter.
Are we creating works of fact, melded with fiction, in electronic formats, disguised in san-serif fonts? Are we just clogging our brains with random grouping of words, when we really should be sitting somewhere else, reading a damn good book and being inspired by writers who’ve long since left this earth, only to leave behind their dance of words?
Plenty to think about. More later.
