What started out as novelist Jon McGregor's blog has been turned into a journal dedicated to handwritten submissions
The Royal Mail is to be sold off and Twitter will float on the New York Stock Exchange, but the art of long-hand letter writing is being celebrated in one corner of the literary world: The Letters Page is a new journal whose first edition is out on Wednesday.
The journal is edited by the novelist Jon McGregor, and emanates from the School of English at the University of Nottingham, where he is writer-in-residence. The first issue includes letters from Magnus Mills, the UK's most famous novel-writing bus driver, whose 1999 debut, The Restraint of Beasts, was shortlisted for the Booker; and 2013 Booker-longlisted novelist Colum McCann.
Mills' handwritten letter read:
Dear J,
Sorry I didn't reply sooner. Thanks for asking and I'm really very flattered, but I don't think I'll be able to supply a hand-written letter for the collection …
McGregor and students from Nottingham's creative writing course are reading and selecting the letters for publication. In a footnote to Mills' piece, McGregor wrote: "We are unclear whether the use of a handwritten letter to apologise for there being no handwritten letter is a deliberate or fortuitous irony. Either way, it's an irony we appreciate."
McGregor won the Impac prize in 2012 for his novel Even the Dogs, about an alcoholic who dies at Christmas; and his debut, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, was longlisted for the Booker prize in 2002 when he was just 26.
The idea of taking letters as the primary form for a journal grew from correspondence he had with prospective writers and readers about what they wanted from a new literary publication. McGregor requested that handwritten letters were submitted by post, many of which initially formed a Tumblr blog, The Letters Page.
"Letters are one of the earliest forms of writing, and are quite a big part of literary culture and history. They're like a [vinyl] record or a piece of handwriting, they're valued as distinct. I don't say that if you write longhand it will be better, but the tools you use affect the way you think about what you say," McGregor said. This year, he has attempted not to use email, writing long-hand letters instead. "It was kind of a coincidence and fed into my thinking for the journal."
Colum McCann, who also won the Impac prize in 2011 for his novel Let the Great World Spin, writes of "the greatest letter I ever received":
Dear Reader —
Great letters, like great novels, remind us where we were. I could patch my life together with old airmail papers. The greatest letter I ever received was from my literary hero, John Berger (2), a letter that arrived, blue, out of the blue. He is a beautiful letter writer (3). Sometimes I can hear his pen glide across the page.
McCann's footnote explains: "(2.) John often writes notes in his letters, along the side. I always think: 'Never again will a single story be told as if it were the only one.' [The quotation is from G, the 1972 Booker Prize-winning novel by John Berger.]"
Upcoming editions may focus on letters from prison, letters of complaint or thank-you letters, and "even letters to Jimmy Savile. There must be a whole generation who wrote with their requests", McGregor said, adding "it would have to be handled sensitively".
The Letters Page is published three times a year and is distributed free as a downloadable PDF. Submissions are open for the second edition, on the subject of penpals, until 16 October.
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