Today's love letter from The Times was written by Neil Gaiman. He's a British writer who according to his website, is listed in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the "top ten living post-modern writers."
Since he writes comics, I imagined his love letter would be blood-and-guts chiaroscuro proclamations of self-flagellation and thwarted lust. I was looking forward to being implicated in other-worldly temptations or, at the very least, an interesting sentence or two.
But, like Atwood's letter of love yesterday, his piece appeared to have been written on the back of a semi-sogged napkin, between drink one and two (so not even humorous) while a greedy publisher sat across the table, rubbing her palms together and cackling at the absurd ease with which accomplished writers can get their 'work' published.
Here's a sample:
I love you, and it is my love for you that drives me to know all about you. The more I know, the closer I am to you. You were to come to my country with a young man, but he broke your heart, and still you came here to spite him, and still you smiled. I close my eyes and I can see you smiling. I close my eyes and I see you striding across the town square in a clatter of pigeons. The women of this country do not stride. They move diffidently, unless they are dancers. And when you sleep your eyelashes flutter. The way your cheek touches the pillow. The way you dream.
This is one of the passages where there is some attempt at poetry. But seriously? A "clatter of pigeons?" A clutter, perhaps. In fact, a clutter would reveal the confusion, the alarm, the self consumed. But clatter is a noise, and not one that any pigeon I've met has been capable of making unless he was strutting around with a garbage can lid and a baseball bat.
Three more love letters to go. And if it's not enough, you can always buy the book, Letter Word: New Love Letters, edited by Joshua Knelman and Rosalind Porter, published by Chatto & Windus, which is coming out next month.
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