Letters Sent Me

Every writer craves fans. The reasons for committing words to paper, or whatever medium is in favour in your historical moment, are many. But high among them is surely the basic human desire to communicate, to reach across the chasm that yawns between discrete minds and forge a connection of thought or sensibility.

It follows, rather uncomfortably, that reaction to one’s writing is part of the bargain. Many writers claim to have an ideal reader in mind when they address the blank page: a beloved but sharp-eyed aunt, a favourite adolescent friend, a former teacher. I can’t say there is a single perfect auditor for my own mental voices, in part because those voices are plural. For example, the imagined reader of this essay is somebody very much like me, I suppose, possessing elements of sassy irony that I don’t always apply to myself in everyday life. “Don’t say that, you silly git!”

If ideal readers are a tricky business, real ones are even more...