The Letters of ...

Correspondence is its own genre in writing.  Like essays and diaries, written communication between and among authors and dignitaries is published and frequently lauded. King James the Sixth and Elizabeth the First have a book published of their letters; Lawrence Durrell and Alfred Perles corresponded about infamous Henry Miller (in a book with the terrific title Art and Outrage). Eminent diarist Anais Nin and an obscure poet named Felix Pollak wrote letters to each other interesting enough for a volume of their own. Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, even Ronald Reagan wrote letters someone believed should be published. And Charles Darwin? His correspondence, the publication of which began in 1985 and is so vast it isn’t even complete yet, is expected to take up 30 volumes.

Alas. I’m not even slightly interested in reading any of the above. Really. I don't even read letters to the editor -- even in the good magazines.

In fact, the only mail I’ve ever been interested in besides that which I write and receive was between a couple of relative unknowns named Helene Hanff and Frank Doel. I wish I could say I stumbled across this pair in a secondhand book store in the Lower Haight Ashbury back when I was a young San Franciscan, but no. Ann Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins brought them to my attention in a 1987 film called “84, Charing Cross Road.”

Hanff was a sort of 1960’s Nora Ephron; a “professional New Yorker” according to Wikipedia. She loved old, obscure, classic books, and in her quest discovered an ad for the bookshop Marks & Co. in England. She solicited the shop for titles beginning in 1949, and for the next twenty years she and Frank Doel, the buyer, wrote letters to each other. These letters are the stuff of great literature and good film. 84, Charing Cross Road is a love story like no other, one developed solely through correspondence, for Helene and Frank never met.

The movie is great. The slim, little book - 112 pages in all - is even greater.