Image

Credit...Peter Stevenson for The New York Times

By Leah Greenblatt

Dear readers,

Apparently, I was one of the last to learn that they don’t teach cursive anymore, at least not in New York City public schools. Maybe I am silly to mourn it; like milkmen and landlines, some things naturally see themselves out.

Even my own longhand tends to cramp now when I try to write anything more substantial than a grocery list, the weakling muscles of a lost habit turning my words sloppy and serial killer-ish. (Beloved birthday-card recipients, please believe me! It’s an expression of love, not a ransom note.)

Still, I miss the intimacy of analog communication; the low-stakes thrill of a voice unfiltered by Times New Roman or (sigh) Comic Sans. And the two selections in this week’s newsletter, while typeset like any other respectable novel, feel like book-length letters to me: chatty, confiding and charmingly digressive, like dispatches from an inordinately smart and waggish pen pal.

—Leah

“Landscape With Traveler,”by Barry Gifford

Fiction, 1980