February 10, 2007
Say It With Txt
Digital love letters are easy to send, but hard to cherish, writes the WSJ.
"Love letters aren't what they used to be. While young correspondents have committed their deepest feelings to paper for centuries, the latest generation of lovers is coming of age along with new technologies that let them court each other on the run.
The passionate essays penned on Valentine's Days past have morphed into bursts of instant-message affection. Confessions once sealed in envelopes are now dashed off in email.
... The immediacy of high-tech love letters can be exhilarating; there's no waiting for a ship to cross an ocean with news that someone finds you irresistible. However, while older generations have treasured handwritten love letters wrapped in ribbons, many of today's young romantics will end up with little tangible proof that anyone ever cared about them. Unsaved emails disappear. Text messages are gone forever if a cellphone breaks or gets lost."
Read Love's Labors Not Lost, Just Kept in the Closet
Go see it if it comes to your part of town, a wonderful and moving play called Love Letters, by A.R. Gurney. "Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, it centers on two characters, Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepiece Ladd III. Using the epistolary form sometimes found in novels, they sit side by side at tables and read the correspondence - in which they discuss their hopes and ambitions, dreams and disappointments, and victories and defeats - that has passed between them throughout their lives. It is only at the end that they both realize they were really love letters at their core. "
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