Lytton Strachey writes to Clive Bell
Posted by George Snyder at 11/15/2007 4:05 PM and is filed under uncategorized 
Autograph letter signed ("G.L.Strachey"), 1 page, octavo, Lancaster Gate, 11 July, 1904, regretting he will be unable to call in at tea time tomorrow but will after dinner, and inquiring whether the Goth [Thoby Stephen] will be there.
In ancient times, at work on an IBM Selectric (TM), [electric with removable and changeable balls of font] the infernal machine and bottle of Makers Mark cropped from the photograph, of unknown date but from internal evidence circa 1984.
It has been said that in my heyday I was an enticing letter writer, and they were almost never typed. Scouting about for some analogy to this blogging phenomenon (Is it epistolatory in nature? Will it catch on?) I found myself trying to explain to a friend who never does why people do (blog). "The charm is obvious," he wrote back, in reference to a sample I had forwarded. "But it is hard for me [He's an academic - Ed. note] since I am used to historical and cultural and textual specificity, to figure out what is at stake in the generalized literacy of these exchanges."
"It's like cocktail conversation," I replied somewhat unhelpfully, "except you don't have to dress up and it's typed instead of uttered with a drink in hand." Come to think of it, I reflected, there could well BE a drink in hand in some cases. One-handed typing, I mused, which would of course be another kind of on-line entertainment altogether and about which I ardently hoped my friend was and would remain unaware.
"So this explains the curiously hip and worldly-wise tone you seem to adopt?" he inquired.
"I admit," I wrote back only slightly defensively, "that there is an element of flirtation and even what one might term a sort of showing off in some cases, except not for sexual favors (I hastened to add) which, okay, goes on too, but usually before you exchange face shots. Although I'm told it's usually after the exchange of body-part shots."
I will spare you the flurry of emailing that ensued at this point, adding only that I needed to elaborate upon the manner in which a certain amount of fishing [phishing] went on as well, since one's audience is so unpredictable and unknowable. "We work in the dark," I wrote, fond of the phrase.
"You don't know who you're corresponding with?" he asked.
Yes and No, I confessed, adding by way of justication (put I hoped not too pointedly) that some of us were NOT in intellectually stimulating careers with colleagues with whom we could discuss our interests ... and then I petered out, out of concern I was sounding a little Miss Lonelyhearts. My fears were justified. "You feel isolated," he remarked.
"It's not quite like that," I countered, bristling. Dear God help me I've become my father, I thought, conjuring a vision of someone my father was said to resemble (and vice versa), hunched over a Ham Radio mike, reaching out to other lonely men in basement rooms across the Midwest, excited about making contact with some stranger in Canada on a clear night.
"What interests me," my friend continued, "is the relation between the isolation and the self-presentation. Are people obsessed with self-presentation because they're so isolated? Or is isolation an effect of the emphasis on self-presentation? I tend to think the latter. It's hard to sustain a controlled play of surfaces in a social milieu. Just like real bodies don't stay put the way pornographic images do."
I agreed, for the sake of the argument.
But really, it's Ham Radio, I wanted to reply. With pictures. But was it? I wondered. I doubt the conversations my dad pieced together, carried on wireless with people he met on the airwaves were anything you'd ever want committed to print. Not like writing letters (if you have any of mine, please burn them). "Hi how's the weather, I've got a wife and five kids in a farmhouse in Pennsylvania and I'm working my way through a case of Iron City beer out here in the barn, how you doin?"
Not like that, exactly. I exaggerate. It's part of the self-presentation. Dear Reader, I could be an elderly Dutch woman on my grandson's MAC for all you know. I could be working for "To Catch a Predator." I could be anyone.
I could be someone you know.
In ancient times, at work on an IBM Selectric (TM), [electric with removable and changeable balls of font] the infernal machine and bottle of Makers Mark cropped from the photograph, of unknown date but from internal evidence circa 1984.It has been said that in my heyday I was an enticing letter writer, and they were almost never typed. Scouting about for some analogy to this blogging phenomenon (Is it epistolatory in nature? Will it catch on?) I found myself trying to explain to a friend who never does why people do (blog). "The charm is obvious," he wrote back, in reference to a sample I had forwarded. "But it is hard for me [He's an academic - Ed. note] since I am used to historical and cultural and textual specificity, to figure out what is at stake in the generalized literacy of these exchanges."
"It's like cocktail conversation," I replied somewhat unhelpfully, "except you don't have to dress up and it's typed instead of uttered with a drink in hand." Come to think of it, I reflected, there could well BE a drink in hand in some cases. One-handed typing, I mused, which would of course be another kind of on-line entertainment altogether and about which I ardently hoped my friend was and would remain unaware.
"So this explains the curiously hip and worldly-wise tone you seem to adopt?" he inquired.
"I admit," I wrote back only slightly defensively, "that there is an element of flirtation and even what one might term a sort of showing off in some cases, except not for sexual favors (I hastened to add) which, okay, goes on too, but usually before you exchange face shots. Although I'm told it's usually after the exchange of body-part shots."
I will spare you the flurry of emailing that ensued at this point, adding only that I needed to elaborate upon the manner in which a certain amount of fishing [phishing] went on as well, since one's audience is so unpredictable and unknowable. "We work in the dark," I wrote, fond of the phrase.
"You don't know who you're corresponding with?" he asked.
Yes and No, I confessed, adding by way of justication (put I hoped not too pointedly) that some of us were NOT in intellectually stimulating careers with colleagues with whom we could discuss our interests ... and then I petered out, out of concern I was sounding a little Miss Lonelyhearts. My fears were justified. "You feel isolated," he remarked.
"It's not quite like that," I countered, bristling. Dear God help me I've become my father, I thought, conjuring a vision of someone my father was said to resemble (and vice versa), hunched over a Ham Radio mike, reaching out to other lonely men in basement rooms across the Midwest, excited about making contact with some stranger in Canada on a clear night.
"What interests me," my friend continued, "is the relation between the isolation and the self-presentation. Are people obsessed with self-presentation because they're so isolated? Or is isolation an effect of the emphasis on self-presentation? I tend to think the latter. It's hard to sustain a controlled play of surfaces in a social milieu. Just like real bodies don't stay put the way pornographic images do."
I agreed, for the sake of the argument.
But really, it's Ham Radio, I wanted to reply. With pictures. But was it? I wondered. I doubt the conversations my dad pieced together, carried on wireless with people he met on the airwaves were anything you'd ever want committed to print. Not like writing letters (if you have any of mine, please burn them). "Hi how's the weather, I've got a wife and five kids in a farmhouse in Pennsylvania and I'm working my way through a case of Iron City beer out here in the barn, how you doin?"
Not like that, exactly. I exaggerate. It's part of the self-presentation. Dear Reader, I could be an elderly Dutch woman on my grandson's MAC for all you know. I could be working for "To Catch a Predator." I could be anyone.
I could be someone you know.
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