Las Vegas, Nevada
July 27, 2000

Dear Readers,

Today’s letter is by Bill Lychack, an editor/ghostwriter at Guidepostsmagazine. It is the fourth letter in our week-long series of open letters about life at work.

Bill’s editor at Open Letters is Joel Lovell (who wrote last week about his own recent fainting spell); I asked Joel to write a brief note about Bill, and here’s what he sent me:

Today’s writer, Bill Lychack, plays the accordion. And he possesses a black belt in karate. And he writes honest-to-God fables (his story, or trio of small stories, “A Stand of Fables,” was chosen by John Edgar Wideman for inclusion inBest American Short Stories 1996) of the kind that masterful fiction writer and longtime New Yorker editor William Maxwell used to write. It’s tough to find anyone who really writes like that anymore, because it’s the kind of writing – like today’s letter – that requires not only an amazing gift for language but also a refusal to be world-weary and ironic.

Also: The weekend is almost upon us, which means that the next issue of the Open Letters weekly will soon be going out to our subscribers, for free, via email, as a PDF. If you’re a new reader of Open Letters, and you’re wondering why we’re so gung-ho about this subscription idea, the short version is that it’s easy to read, portable, innovative, and free; you can read the long version, which includes phrases like “content delivery” and “distribution model,” by clicking here. To subscribe, go to this page, or just send a blank email toweekly@openletters.net.

Thanks to Bill for today’s letter, to Joel for inviting him to write it, and to you, as always, for reading.

Yours truly,

Paul Tough