New York City
December 29, 2000

Dear Readers,

Today’s letter comes from Jonathan Ames of Brooklyn, New York, and Bloomington, Indiana. He’s the author of two novels, I Pass Like Night and The Extra Man, and a memoir, What’s Not to Love: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer.

I have been a fan of Jonathan’s non-fiction writing for many years – I used to read it serially in his New York Press column, which in the mid-Nineties alternated with and complemented Amy Sohn’s column. (Do you remember her open letter, on long-distance love? Well, you can read it here.)

His column, and his book, and now his open letter, are all marked by an unusual and enviable confidence in his right and his duty to tell his own story.

Speaking of which, this week we received an email from a reader named Jon Calame, who said he’d recently been reading the first chapter of “Walden,” by Henry David Thoreau, and had come across a passage that reminded him of Open Letters. “I thought I would pass it along for a rainy day,” he wrote, “or a small boost when the editing seems hopeless.”

Editing, of course, never seems hopeless, but that doesn’t take away from Jon’s generosity, or diminish the truth of Thoreau’s words, which seem like a fitting introduction, or postscript, to Jonathan’s letter:

In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained….We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.

Monday is New Year’s Day, it’s true. But we’ll be publishing all the same, ringing in the new year and ringing out volume three of Open Letters with a week’s worth of letters about beginnings and endings.

And some time early on New Year’s Eve, our subscribers will receive their last PDF issue of 2000. If you’d like to join them, you can read all about our free subscriptions right here.

Happy holidays.

Yours truly,

Paul Tough