The Lost Art of the Unsent Angry Letter

[elleng]

I've had one of these growing in my imagination for a few weeks.

'But while it may be the unsent mail of politicians and writers that is saved for posterity, that doesn’t mean that they somehow hold a monopoly on the practice. Lovers carry on impassioned correspondence that the beloved never sees; family members vent their mutual frustrations. We rail against the imbecile who elbowed past us on the subway platform. . .

But even though a degree of depth and consideration may well have been lost along with the art of the unsent letter, something was also lost with those old letters that weren’t sent because their would-be sender overthought their appropriateness. I’d have loved for Truman to have actually sent this one off to the red-baiting Republican senator from Wisconsin, Joseph R. McCarthy: “You are not even fit to have a hand in the operation of the Government of the United States. I am very sure that the people of Wisconsin are extremely sorry that they are represented by a person who has as little sense of responsibility as you have.”

Truman may have ended up regretting lashing out, but at least he would have had the satisfaction of knowing that he’d told off one of the blights of the American political scene when so many kept quiet. What survived as a “hot letter” would have made for quite the viral email.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/opinion/sunday/the-lost-art-of-the-unsent-angry-letter.html?hp&rref=opinion

[hunter]

1. Sometimes I'll write an angry DU post and then not post it.

Unless the NSA has some kind of key-logger on my computer the angry post vanishes unread by anyone but me, gone forever.

I used to copy some of these posts to the clipboard and then save them as a text file, but I haven't done that for years. I think I recognized they were for me, therapeutic, and maybe I've at last learned not to push the "Post" button too soon.

Too bad I haven't yet learned to do that speaking... I still say inflammatory things in "real time" I can't take back. That's why I don't use instant messaging, that's why I'm generally a quiet person.

[Alameda]

2. I still do it....but...

I do them in long hand on paper notebooks, in fact, I'm working on one now.

[rocktivity]

3. I once wrote two letters of resignation

Last edited Mon Dec 21, 2015, 12:58 PM - Edit history (4)

One that I submitted to by boss and one that I, uh, saved on my home computer and would read occasionally. It wasn't vindictive at all -- I was angry with him, but it was because I felt his business model doomed the company to limited growth: I had become "tired of wasting my time, and by extension stealing your money."

That was five years ago, and guess what? Because I departed on friendly terms (on paper at least), I was hired to update the company's Web site last summer. With only one exception, there has been a complete turnover in staff, and the company is still on a treadmill financially. But I felt so vindicated I was able to delete the letter because I no longer "needed" it!


rocktivity

[elleng]

4. Good!

[rocktivity]

5. UPDATE: He's hired me for yet another Web project

Last edited Sun Mar 29, 2015, 11:49 AM - Edit history (2)

My boss has sold the company and hooked up with a real estate broker who needs 3 web sites. But he clearly hasn't changed: as we rode past a strip mall occupied only by a Chinese takeout, he raved about how much potential the real estate market had!


rocktivity