Since the days of Samuel Johnson, intellectuals have bemoaned the fact that people no longer write letters. Which shows how wrongheaded intellectuals can be at times. More letters are being written today than at any other time in history. The fact is, however, that the nature of the correspondence one receives has changed drastically.

In a letter to a friend, Dr. Johnson wrote that "I look forward every day to the arrival of the post. Who knows but that it might bear a letter from an old friend; a brief note from someone I love; a letter from a foreign land; a letter from a stranger congratulating me upon my wisdom; and a good book that has long been awaited".

While the contents of a perfect mail delivery will differ from person to person, nearly all would concur that the hordes of mail that reach us today are anything but satisfactory. What we find is primarily junk. The banks and the credit-card companies have inherited not only the earth but the domain of the postal service.

The average mail delivery will contain one or more notices from our bank, a bill from the electric company, another from the den- tist, a nasty letter from the tax authorities and a proposal that take out a life-time subscription to one lottery or some other tomfoolery. Periodically we will also find one of the letters we sent, now returned to our own mail box, stamped in the most hideous shade of purple, "Addressee Unknown". Another category of unwelcome mail includes unwanted invitations, the kind that led Sherlock Holmes to remark to Watson "this looks like one of those unwelcome social summons which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie".

True literary letters, those which are a joy to read and reread, are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. People no longer seem to have the leisure or the energy to write chatty letters filled with news, descriptions, anecdotes and observations. Perhaps more accurately, they no longer have the habit. The telephone habit and that other abomination - the e-mail habit, have replaced it. If fewer love letters are being written today it is because lovers now speak to one another on the phone, via email or via icq and their conversations need no longer be recorded.

What should give us even greater cause for unhappiness is that most of the social letters we receive are frankly boring. People simply do not know how to write letters any longer. If one wants to seek out ideal letter writers, one has to return to the days of Madame de Sevigne, Horace Walpole, or Charles Lamb, each of whom was a person of wide interests and no superficiality. Their letters contained wit, common sense, generosity and perspective, all of which gave their correspondence weight and charm.

Henry James, who rarely corresponded with friends, was famed for writing condolence letters. His biographer, Leon Edel remarked that "his condolences were so fine, so properly measured and elegantly turned, they seemed almost worth dying for."

One should also pause for a moment to consider why some letters survive and others do not. Letters from attorneys and the tax man, although probably saved during an individual's lifetime, were certainly discarded upon their demise. And love letters, no matter how fascinating, are most often burned in the name of either prudence or good taste.

Those letters which survive tend to be those written by the famous. As essayist Felix Pryor points out, it would require a praiseworthy degree of sang-froid to throw a letter from a queen or prime minister into a trash basket. Others of the letters which made their way into public consciousness have been written by professional writers. Those who can write good books are usual- ly the ones best able to write good letters. They are at home with the medium. It is a bonus that some who were good primarily at other things, like Van Gogh, Gainsborough or Nelson could also write brilliant letters.

People used to take their letters seriously. In 1730, Alexander Pope asked all of his correspondents to return the letters he had sent them. It then took Pope several years to re-write and publish his own letters. Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain and Dylan Thomas never dispatched even the simplest of their letters until they had brought them to the point of polish that they felt made them as perfect as their novels or poems.

About the only people who invest such time in their letters today are those who send "hate mail" to public figures. Sociologist Donald Carrol called such letters "the most popular and enduring genre of folk literature in the world". He added that such letters have always had more practitioners than readers, implying that most recipients of such letters simply do not read them. One person who actually enjoyed receiving hate mail was Voltaire, who replied to one correspondent: "I am seated in the smallest room in the house. I have your letter before me. Soon it will be behind me."

Despite the popularity of the telephone, we should not write off letters as an antiquated form of communication. There are still those among us who feel that letters remain invaluable for care- fully formulating thought, for expressing good humor and for expressions of deep caring. Then too, there are those sentiments that shyness does not ordinarily allow us to convey in conversation: gratitude, love and apology can often be more easily conveyed in a letter than in a face-to-face situation.

As to e-mail, I may be old fashioned but I am not stupid, and even I am willing to admit that this is a tremendous convenience. My Problem comes about however for even though e-mail (and for that matter icq or other similar internet communications tools) allow us to pass on or exchange information quickly, they do not encourage depth, intimacy or poetic expression. In a phrase, e-mail is so easy that it becomes artificial, so casual that it often becomes meaningless and so convenient that we tend to see the email and not the recipient of our notes as most important. With regard to the cyber-tons of "junk" that we receive by email, one can only be thankful that our computers have "delete" keys.

There are, however, those among us that remain optimists, hoping that amidst the junk mail, the bills, the crank mail, and the multitude of memos that find us, splendid letters will continue to be written. Hope lives eternal that we will receive letters so dear that we will carry them in our wallets or purses so that on quiet moments we may take them out, read them yet another time and reflect not only on the words but on the good person who took time to write them.

© Daniel Rogov