![]() ![]() ![]() Monday and Tuesday are alternate-side parking days, which makes Tuesday-parking, garbage and recycling-a very special day, indeed. “It’s Thursday, garbage day,” he writes on May 26. An essay or novella, if he has the desire. Jonathan Safran Foer on garbage days: bring it on. And so, while Foer has found himself mocked for his recitation of when the garbage trucks come by in his neighborhood, well I just found it fascinating. They are written at odd times of day when one’s mind strays from the profound to the quotidian. The first wonderful thing of the Foer-Portman letters is that they are ranging, a little scatty and indulgent and with a wonderful wide-ranging subject beam. They like words, and in Foer’s case a lot: why use one word when 20 are available? Writers and artists, especially writers and artists who are friends, express themselves fulsomely. The notion that expressing oneself fully and unapologetically in letter form is somehow excruciating and funny, especially as criticized by other writers, must be rooted in a weird self-hatred. There was a time that sitting down, and writing a letter to another human being was an art in itself, and an expression of trust and intimacy in the other person. Note history’s best love letters, or even dedicated correspondence from masters of letter-writing like Maurice Sendak and Georgia O’Keefe. ![]()
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