Incoherence Abroad

by Carl Jensen,

From a letter to Mark Twain, postmarked October 1, 1879, from Carl Jensen, a customs officer in Stubbekøbing, Denmark. Twain’s annotation reads, “Preserve this remarkable letter.” Dear Mark Twain: Letters…

Visible Cities

by Italo Calvino, Martin McLaughlin,

From Italo Calvino: Letters 1941–1985, out this month from Princeton University Press. Franco Maria Ricci, a publisher, commissioned Calvino to prepare a text for a volume containing reproductions of the…

Le Misérable

Translated by Ryann Liebenthal,

From open letters by the actor Gérard Depardieu, addressed to French prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and to the Russian press. In January, Depardieu obtained Russian citizenship in order to evade…

Alphabet Cities

by Paul Auster, J. M. Coetzee,

From Here and Now, a collection of letters exchanged by novelists J. M. Coetzee and Paul Auster between 2008 and 2011, out this month from Viking. 24 august 2009 Dear…

The Highbrander

by Lucy Bird,

From an October 9, 2012, email sent by Lucy Bird, then chief executive of Marketing Edinburgh, to city councillors Sue Brice and Alastair Maclean, during the development of an ad…

Nothing Serious

by Pico Iyer,

P. G. Wodehouse and the costs of innocence

Surf, Turf, and Grief

by Dina Kourda,

From an October 26 letter from Dina Kourda to Joe Dillman, the street-maintenance superintendent in Irvine, California. As a concerned citizen of Irvine, I am writing today on behalf of…

Oslo Discord

by Anders Behring Breivik,

From a twenty-seven-page letter by Anders Behring Breivik sent last October to corrections officials in Norway. Breivik is currently serving a twenty-one-year sentence in a maximum-security prison near Oslo for…

Martyr Complex

From emails received by Michael D’Antuono in response to his painting The Truth, which depicts President Barack Obama in a crucifixion-like pose and wearing a crown of thorns. D’Antuono originally…

Class Struggle

From almost 2,000 comments about student loans sent to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and released on its website last June. Americans currently owe more than $1 trillion in outstanding…

St. Paul’s Curse

by Owen O’Malley,

From a May 24, 1943, memo to British foreign secretary Anthony Eden, from Owen O’Malley, the British ambassador to the Polish government in exile, in the collection of the Franklin…

Correspondence

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