Correspondences

I used to be blown away with the volume of correspondence that a Turgenev, George Sand, or any other number of 19th century writerly types used to crank out. Now that I have email and (dare I say it) a blog, I can see how you can churn out a ton. If you're reading and thinking a lot and staying in touch with people, number of combinations and connections of ideas, people, and things seems limitless. Correspondences beget correspondence. And if you have a lot of free time, you just keep cranking and cranking.

It is really impressive that they did it with pens. My hand aches from taking a bunch of notes this week. Boring but bill-paying stuff. I can't imagine hand-writing as much as they did, particularly with all the floral phraseology ("I was most delighted to be informed of your potential upcoming visit to our sun-blessed little corner of Alsace, particularly as the market fair is approaching, promising a plethora of most compelling repasts..."). All those adjectives and parenthetical must have added up.

(This post was actually half-canned and waiting to be finished. I think it's pretty clear that the basic thought is sort of stale and uninteresting. But I want to post something, if only to reward my loyal if paltry readership. Most of the posts that I leave up on the shelf in draft form end up kind of bloodless, even if they seem interesting.

I'm also shocked and hurt. I feel like posts were lost by Blogger server over the last couple of days. Or maybe I fucked up the dates. Whatever. Gotta go work).