I read an article in the newspaper today about the lost art of letter writing in the electronic age of e-mailing. I was reminded of the Ken Burns television documentary on the United States Civil War that aired several years ago.

Much of the material in the documentary was taken from letters written by soldiers back home to their families, most often their spouses. I was impressed with the eloquence of the writing, the mastery of the English language in expressing very personally, the experience of being in the war, yearning to re-united with loved ones and acknowledging the sorrow that they might not ever see one another again.

The letters were not only of the highly educated. They were often just regular folks from all walks of life. The letters sounded like passages from literature, very articulate and flowing in their expression. The authors of those letters obviously had much experience in the art of writing letters.

The letters were composed with great care, not quickly dashed off, and reflected a heart felt caring for the person to whom the letter was written. I am sure the letters were read with the same great caring, not skimmed quickly. Hence, these letters served to map historical events from the personal experience of those who lived them.

I like the thought of letters being literature and being composed with care and creative expression. They are an early form of the current genre referred to as creative non-fiction or personal essay, but practiced by people who would never have referred to themselves as writers, nor ever enrolled in a writing class. It was simply a part of their way of life.

E-mail messages are not literature, sometimes barely writing, and probably are often read with more haste than they were written. An archive of e-mail messages does not have the same appeal or heart as a collection of letters in documenting the lives and times of people in history. E-mail messages are like a current version of the old telegrams, written as if there is a cost per word.

There is a lose of human interest information in the age of information technology. What is saved is time, unless we buy the idea that time is relative rather than absolute in the human psyche. Going faster electronically seems to make time go faster as compared to doing things slowly with care and actually extending our sense and enjoyment of time.