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Join NOW!Elegance is a refinement of simplicity rather than a flourish of excess. Elegance prompts wit rather than comedy, sentiment rather than sentimentality. Such restraint is the lens through which all the diffuse sensations of desire are focused into the flame of passion. The Atlantic has a short how-to guide for writing the perfect love letter. […]
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No one cares, of course, if you’re still capable at forty-four of being bad, or if you think you’ve got to be bad sometimes just to know you’re alive.
...moreThis is a story is about a con that unfolded very slowly over two decades. When the con was finally exposed, some of the victims defended the people who had been fooling them. They preferred to believe the lie. NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast recently featured an episode called “The Heart Wants What It Wants,” a […]
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I know you understand me when I tell you this. I know you understand dead of night. Tell me what lines you’ve read so I know how to imagine you. Tell me who is gone. Tell me if you, like me, always think of going.
...moreI shall worship her with quiet dignity. I shall draw her attention to me by exploits, success, and possibly a small measure of fame,” wrote a young, romantically inclined Jack Kerouac to a friend in one of a cache of letters by the Beat author that has come to light. Writers often find interest in […]
...morePaper notes and postcards have all but joined rotary phones and singing telegrams in the history books of communication. Email and text messages might have the advantage of speed (and sometimes playful naughtiness), but neither can compensate for the tangible quality of a physical letter. Writing for Vogue, Rumpus contributor Jami Attenberg reminisces on the […]
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Timothy Schaffert, author of THE SWAN GONDOLA, describes 10 old-timey epistolary romances that went awry.
...moreA little bit of James Dean has been preserved in the recently-uncovered love letters he wrote to his girlfriend Barbara Glenn. They’re dated from 1954, the year before he was killed in an auto accident and also during the period of his rising stardom. (via @Book Bench)
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