#1279 The Art of the Letter

Listening to America

Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2018

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Every letter has a basis and a purpose … I spent an enormous amount of time thinking about the recipient."

— Thomas Jefferson, as portrayed by Clay S. Jenkinson

We speak this week with President Jefferson about the art of letter writing. Prompted by a letter from a listener, Jefferson shares his insights on the process. The exact number of letters Jefferson wrote is not known, but it is safe to say he wrote in excess of 20,000.

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Thomas Jefferson is interpreted by Clay S. Jenkinson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good Day Thomas Jefferson, our podcast listeners and welcome to this week's broadcast.
0:06.0	Thomas Jefferson said the only way that his life could ever be written would be someone studying all of the letters that he received and the letters that he wrote.
0:14.7	We got a letter from Cameron Shorke, not long hand, but an email.
0:19.7	Yeah, here we go.
0:20.9	He asked us if we could do a program about the significance and art of letter writing,
0:27.0	both Jefferson related and historical.
0:29.0	I'm not sure we got to all of that, but we did do a program on letter writing.
0:33.2	Well we tried to figure out how Jefferson thought through his letters before he wrote them.
0:39.2	You know if you and I don't mean any sarcasm with respect to President Trump, but today when someone has something to say,
0:46.4	they just put out their characters and they push send.
0:50.1	And there's a spontaneousness and an immediacy and a lack of filtering that's part of
0:55.1	Instagram and tweeting and texting and instant messaging and even email and so the question is
1:01.2	all right what would Jefferson do with these technologies?
1:04.3	Surely he would embrace them, but his view was that a letter is a time to be more
1:10.0	circumspect and more deliberate and to think through the effect you're trying to have on the
1:16.4	on the recipient before you commit pen to paper. And that may be the biggest single difference,
1:21.7	I think.
1:22.6	He writes a very nice letter.
1:24.3	Give us a few paragraphs.
1:25.4	Well, I'm not going to because I don't want to,
1:28.0	I'd rather remain a bit more humble than that because it's,
1:32.3	he is, he is he is
	...

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