![]() ![]() This was bookstore manager Frank Doel of Marks & Co. Overwhelmed by a sense of failure and loneliness in her fifties, after the collapse of some long-held dreams about becoming a Broadway playwright (not to mention the four decades she spent trying), Hanff received news that one of her oldest friends had died. “That her nature often resulted in alienation gives her story all the more pathos.” “I’m a great lover of i-was-there books,” she wrote in her most famous work. ![]() It could be argued that Helene Hanff invented the style of writing now employed almost blindly by bloggers the world over – the confessional epistolary genre, studded with emotion, was embedded in her genes, and her unbeatable use of it was borne of her own life experience. Of all the writers I admire, I cannot think of one who deserved more to have lived long enough to write in the age of blogging. MISTRESS OF MISSIVES Helene Hanff (1916-1997) made a career of letter writing.ĬOULD there be a better proponent of written communication, a smarter wordsmith, a more ‘writerly’ writer than New York denizen, Queen of the day job, rejection letter collector, and one of the world’s biggest fans of English Literature – Helene Hanff (1916-1997), author of 84, Charing Cross Road? ![]()
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