Posted by noa on July 21, 2000, at 12:56:39
Have any of you ever seen the film 84 Charring Cross Road, or read the book? It is about a correspondence relationship that develops between an American woman and a man who runs a bookshop in England.
I have never seen the movie, but I just reread the book. It is an quick and easy read, just a collection of letters exchanged over about 20 years. It is by Helene Hanff, who was a tv writer in the fifties and sixties.
She started a correspondence with a London bookshop, inquiring about an out of print book. Over the course of 20 years or so, she and the store's employees, mostly one employee, but also others as well as his wife, and a neighbor, and after his death, his daughter.
The letters are very emial-like in style. Well, Helene's letters are, the bookshop people are less so. All the letters are fairly brief. Helene often ignores capitalization and writes in informal syntax. She gets very friendly quickly, and is very expressive in a conversational way. She uses all-caps to shout. She teases and uses sarcasm a lot.
At one point, she writes to a friend who is living temporarily in London, and tells her that though she envies her ability to go to the store and meet the people in person, that she suspects that despite her forwardness in her letters, she would probably go into the store, spend a few hours there and leave without ever telling people who she was!
This sounded very much like the internet phenomenon: bold interactions in writing, timid in person.
I started to wonder if Helene Hanff had a bit of social phobia herself. One gets the impression of her holing up in her apartment a lot, as she complains about the idea of venturing out to book stores, etc. as being a major chore, and says she much prefers puschasing the books by mail from this store. But she mentions being in a Democratic Club, being the only woman there, and I think she says she got elected president. Still, I don't know how structured a club it is, that could be significant in terms of her social ease there.
Whether she was socially anxious or not, I also thought she would love the internet. I want to find out if she ever got to use the internet before her death in 1997. She seems like she would be thrilled with it, and would be an avid ebay user (love of old books) and frequent emailer and perhaps also a bulleting board user or chatter.
There are a couple of personal web pages on Helene Hanff (don't you just love the internet!!!).
She died in 1997 at age 79. I have written to one of the web site owners to ask if HH ever got online. I'll let you know.
poster:noa
thread:41125
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000717/msgs/41125.html