letters of note // hunter s. thompson [real mail]

** disclaimer **: hunter was a verbal scrapbooker, expletives were his glitter. as such, the post below is quite...sparkly. dig? if you're not into it, please just skip it.

who gets to send a fax that has a cc list of depp, pitt, nolte, benicio del toro?

Transcript

HOLLY SORENSON / Shooting Gallery / Hollywood / Jan 22 '01

Dear Holly,

Okay, you lazy bitch, I'm getting tired of this waterhead fuckaround that you're doing with The Rum Diary.

We are not even spinning our wheels aggresivly. It's like the whole Project got turned over to Zombies who live in cardboard boxes under the Hollywood Freeway... I seem to be the only person who's doing anything about getting this movie Made. I have rounded up Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Brad Pitt, Nick Nolte & a fine screenwriter from England, named Michael Thomas, who is a very smart boy & has so far been a pleasure to talk to & conspire with...

So there's yr. fucking Script & all you have to do now is act like a Professional & Pay him. What the hell do you think Making a Movie is all about? Nobody needs to hear any more of that Gibberish about yr. New Mercedes & yr. Ski Trips & how Hopelessly Broke the Shooting Gallery is.... If you're that fucking Poor you should get out of the Movie Business. It is no place for Amateurs & Dilletants who don't want to do anything but "take lunch" & Waste serious people's Time.

Fuck this. We have a good writer, we have the main parts casted & we have a very marketable movie that will not even be hard to make....

And all you are is a goddamn Bystander, making stupid suggestions & jabbering now & then like some half-bright Kid with No Money & No Energy & no focus except on yr. own tits.... I'm sick of hearing about Cuba & Japs & yr. Yo-yo partners who want to change the story because the violence makes them Queasy.

Shit on them. I'd much rather deal with a Live asshole than a Dead worm with No Light in his Eyes.... If you people don't want to Do Anything with this movie, just cough up the Option & I'll talk to someone else. The only thing You're going to get by quitting and curling up in a Fetal position is relentless Grief and Embarrassment. And the one thing you won't have is Fun...

Okay, That's my Outburst for today. Let's hope that it gets Somebody off the dime. And if you don't Do Something QUICK you're going to Destroy a very good idea. I'm in the mood to chop yr. fucking hands off.

R.S.V.P

(Signed)

HUNTER

cc:
Depp
Benecio
M. Thomas
Nolte
Shapiro

via letters of note, a super great site that is collecting, translating and transcribing found correspondence of all kinds of profundity, humor and grace. example #2: the history behind the naming of slaughterhouse v.

yours ever [books // real mail]

a few years ago i sat down in a cramped, teal-green riverwest bedroom intending to continue a myspace 'conversation' i'd been having with my not-yet girlfriend, mauriah. having typed a few lines, i stopped short, not feeling invested in it. i realized that i'd shot my mouth off about enjoying writing letters but had yet to follow through (nevermind that we lived three blocks apart). so i drew a mock-up of the myspace message creation page and wrote a letter instead. there was no way of knowing then the trials and miles and travails and mails we'd survive in the coming months and years - largely buoyed by writing letters.

our pen pal partnership transcended daily email and occasional video phone calls as a series of tactile, genuine articles. daily ruminations, found items, coffee rings and the hopes of early mornings mingled with doodles, cut out pictures, work frustrations, and full-color descriptions of the minutia of moments. often the envelopes were handmade. occasionally letters were lost, always to much cursing and despair (on my end, at least). during one stretch, 3 of m's letters in a row were eaten by the mail, leaving me to wonder why 7,500 miles away she'd not been writing. after a time i asked about it and she told me she'd been writing. a few days later, two of the road-weary letters showed up postmarked weeks apart. i almost cried.

i am fortunate to be happily enveloped[!] in a relationship that owes much to real letters. i believe in them. no surprise then, that i'm very keen to get a copy of thomas mallon's latest, yours ever: people and their letters. excerpts from the nytimes review below.

think of a letter, ralph waldo emerson urged his daughter, as “a kind of picture of a voice.” (thomas) mallon recognizes letters as well to be monuments, marathons, performance art. he neglects neither ann landers nor the unabomber. by way of unexpected detours...he delivers up epistolary swooning, stroking, wincing, mulling, composting...

...it is next to impossible to read these pages without mourning the whole apparatus of distance, without experiencing a deep and plangent longing for the airmail envelope, the sweetest shade of blue this side of a tiffany box. is it possible to sound crusty or confessional electronically? it is as if text and e-mail messages are of this world, a letter an attempt, however illusory, to transcend it. all of which adds tension and resonance to mallon’s pages, already crackling with hesitations and vulnerabilities, obsessions and aspirations, with reminders of the lost art of literary telepathy, of the aching, attenuated rhythm of a written correspondence. (full article)

(yes, those pictures are some of our actual collected correspondence.)

japanese postcards [real mail]

make up mogul leonard lauder was an avid, lifelong collector of postcards of all kinds. above are selections from some of the 20,000 japanese postcards that lauder donated to the collection at the museum of fine art, boston. the eminently bountiful and reliable new york public library has a few thousand digitals from other parts of lauder's collection. send me a postcard and i promise to send one back:

john murn
no. 39 lane 582
xida rd. 5th floor
hsinchu city 30044
taiwan r.o.c.

postcards [real mail]

DOWNLOAD: jens lekman - postcard to nina (live with narration) [mp3]
DOWNLOAD: the walkmen - postcards from tiny islands [mp3]

nonconfrontations [hijinks]

from www.anonymouspostcard.org:

anonymous postcard is designed to allow anyone to openly communicate to a third party without the complications of personal contact. after being vetted by our staff of experts, claims that reflect the civic spirit of the project will be transformed into vague and largely indecipherable postcards and mailed towards the intended recipient.

anonymous postcard is to your unresolved gripes what postsecret is to the skeleton in your closet.