by PETER BACH
Despite writing this letter each week, I still wonder why so few of us write real ones anymore. I was thinking of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, who corresponded frequently but met only once: ‘The present racial crisis in this country carries within it powerful destructive ingredients that may soon erupt into an uncontrollable explosion,’ warned Malcolm X to King one day. (Despite words to the contrary, King never did say he felt ‘Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice.’) King had already written from his Birmingham jail in Alabama a letter addressed to all clergymen which American academic Clayborne Carson described as the most important letter ever written. A letter in which King offered a detailed argument for protest — the type of course which killed both King and Malcolm X in the end.
Nor had I realised the first letter ever written was by a woman. This was set down by Persian Queen Atossa in about 500 BC. (Atossa sprang back to life in Gore Vidal’s 1981 novel Creation, which also just so happens to be a favourite book of Noam Chomsky. (‘Noam noted my own astonished discovery,’ penned Vidal, ‘that four separate literate societies, more or less at the same time, abandoned their ancient oral system of communication in favour of writing everything down.) In the Bible, entire books were based on letters. Peter’s was written to Christians under heavy pressure from Romans. Letter writing today feels as old as catching a train around Europe reading a well-leafed paperback.
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