The delights of personal letters surface in La Grande writer's book

Cover of Lois Barry’s book

You could reach for a computer keyboard or a BlackBerry and zip an e-mail through cyberspace.

Better yet, in the minds of some, is the low-tech option. Reach for pen and paper and practice the often-forgotten art of letter-writing.

La Grande writer Lois Barry, a retired EOU English professor, thinks so. She discusses why and much more in her new book “Always First Class: The Pleasure of Personal Letters.’’ Barry has been an avid fan of personal letter-writing most of her life.

“One of the things that makes my heart sing is a letter in the mail,’’ she said Friday.

Barry the letter-writer is a traditionalist, but one who enjoys the perks of the Internet age. She likes sending and receiving e-mails daily. Still, Barry says online exchanges do not compare to the pen on paper variety.

“An e-mail is a cheerful greeting waved from across the room; a letter is a friend coming over for a pleasant conversation,’’ Barry writes.

Conversations that are fun to eavesdrop on decades later, even if only one speaker is heard.

Barry writes of how one of her most prized letters was one her grandfather wrote to her grandmother in 1910. It tells of how he used black thread to sew back a portion of his nose after a stove pipe he was installing fell on him.

“I treasured that letter because he described the event with such ironic humor, exaggerating his clumsiness as a handyman while boasting of his dexterity as a surgeon,’’ Barry writes of the letter, one she lost decades ago when her house burned down in a forest fire.

“Always First Class...’’ includes a review of the history of letter writing and a chronology of the development of mail delivery in the United States. The chronology makes the reader appreciate how hard it once was to exchange letters.

Barry points out that in 1673 it cost $3.50, then a week’s wages for most people, to mail a letter from New York to Philadelphia. Today a letter can be mailed anywhere in the United States for 44 cents and almost anywhere in the world for 98 cents.

“You can’t think of too many ways two friends can have so much fun for under a dollar,’’ Barry said.

Mailing letters is a bargain by any standard, perhaps too much so.

“It is too easy today to send a letter. We don’t think of it as a privilege,’’ Barry said.

Mail delivery is much faster than it was long ago, still it takes several days for a first class letter to reach most U.S. destinations. Barry believes the span is good, for it extends anticipation, something lacking in today’s hyper-speed world.

“We don’t have delayed gratification any more,’’ Barry said. “When people send an e-mail and they do not get a response in 10 minutes they say, ‘What is going on?’’’

By contrast Barry said that when she receives a letter she can set it aside “until I have some quiet moments to appreciate it. Then after I’ve read a letter once, I save it to read and think about again before I send an answer.’’

The number of e-mails sent in the United States surpassed the total of personal letters mailed for the first time in 1995, Barry said. Surprisingly some of the people who have missed letter-writing after the advent of e-mail are young people.

“A woman about 25 (who had started letter-writing again) told me that she had forgotten the ‘sheer pleasure of longhand and postage stamps,’’’ Barry said.

Longhand and postage stamps are not the only joyful parts of letter writing.

“It is such a pleasant and quiet activity. How many things gives us that moment of tranquilly?’’ Barry said.

“Always First Class...’’ is a 107-page volume that includes quotes on letters from people including John Cheever to Lewis Carroll. The quotations include gems like this one from poet Walt Whitman:

“The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.’’

“Always First Class...’’ was published by Barry’s Best Letters Press of La Grande. Kristin Summers, a La Grande graphic artist, did the cover design.

The book has received high marks from readers, according to Amazon.com. One reader, Frank Devlin of Boston, wrote: “Barry writes with lots of charm and wit in a conversational style that speaks directly to the reader.’’

“Always First Class...’’ is the first book of a two-part series. The second, “Delicious Conversations, The Easy Art of Writing to Family, Friends and Lovers,’’ will be published in a few years. “Delicious Conversations’’ will include extended excerpts of letters by the famous and those not so well known.

“You do not have to be famous to write a great letter,’’ Barry said.

The author said Friday she senses growing interest in letter writing as people reflect upon their lives.

“I’m convinced that e-mail has made regular mail so retro that letter-writing is becoming cool again.’’