"The place where my personal hopes and dreams and the intentions and provisions of the state intersected was the postal system. Its workers, whom in my small town I knew all by name, brought to the house the printed journals--the newspapers and magazines--that represented to me a world where I wished to locate my future. In those days when a postage stamp cost three cents, I sent letters to great and distant men, cartoonists and writers, some of whom deigned, to my eternal gratitude, to respond. Each day's mail brought potential treasure. This is still true for me. I send manuscripts away, I sometimes get praise and money in return. It is the United States mails, with the myriad routes and mechanisms that the service implies, not to mention the basic honesty and efficiency and non-interference of its thousands of employees, that enable me to live as I do, and to do what I do. I never see a blue mailbox without a spark of warmth and wonder and gratitude that this intricate and extensive service is maintained for my benefit." - from John Updike's contribution to a panel, "How does the State Imagine?," conducted on January 13, 1986, as part of the 48th International Pen Congress, held in New York City with the overall theme of "The Writer's Imagination and the Imagination of the State."
-- sdl
I was there when he recited what sounded like a spontaneous ode to the blue mailbox and all that it represented for him -- for me, too -- for all writers. -- DL
Posted by: David Lehman | August 16, 2020 at 02:21 PM
Very true. I really like your post.
Posted by: max louse | December 29, 2020 at 07:30 AM