I like letter writers who gripe about the responses (or lack of) from correspondents.  Pliny is the arch whinger when he doesn’t think his friends have written him fast, frequent or long enough letters. 

But I liked Bernstein’s keeping tally – a 7-pager deserves at least five pages back, surely, so don’t fob me off with a dashed off half page… I confess, I have had ungracious moments of feeling like this when in response to a hand-written letter, an email arrives to tell me in a few lines what a pleasure it is to receive a hand-written letter.

Say – write longer letters; that last one was no answer for my 7-page letter. 

Source: Leonard Bernstein, letter to Sid Ramin, 14 July 1933, in Nigel Simeone ed., The Leonard Bernstein Letters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), p. 6

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