Man of Letters Shares His Passion : Publication Helps Aspiring Pen Pals Find Each Other

It’s as elusive as a good hairdresser, a pair of pants that fit well or a spouse who’s adored by your friends but remains adoring of you.

Someone who answers your letters.

Not just a friend who responds to your thoughtful four-page missives with a few paragraphs hastily mailed four months later--by which time you’ve forgotten what it was you wrote and even if you remember, you no longer have those concerns or opinions.

A Real Correspondent

No, we’re talking about a correspondent--a pen pal, for lack of a better word--someone who relishes the written word and treats the occasion to write a letter as a reward rather than an obligation.

People like that are hard to find. Even though, as Steven Sikora is convinced, there is a rebirth of letter writing in this country.

Sikora, 42, is a teacher-turned-carpenter, who any month now hopes to be able to live off the Letter Exchange, a publication he coordinates and assembles three times yearly from the workshop of his small rented home in Albany, a hilly suburb of Berkeley. Sikora calls the Letter Exchange “a directory of correspondence.” More practically, it’s a directory of correspondents--people who’ve placed ads ($4 for 20 words or less) saying (when you get past the sales pitch) “write me.”

Some examples:

- Midwesterner longs to hear from some residents of desirable climates. (However, do NOT write if you are a country musician, a hunter, a creationist, a sports fanatic or a Republican.)

- Are we becoming addicted to violence? Are we really going to hell in a hand basket? Literate persons with an uncommon sense of humor are invited to reply. No religious fanatics, please.

- A glutton for all subjects looking for like-minded to share thoughts, ideas and recipes. Interests include baking, horror and fantasy movies, roller coasters, human sexuality, computers and spelunking.

And they do write. Theresa Dolezal, 63, of Dearborn, Mich., received more than 50 responses to her ad in the the Letter Exchange’s fall edition. Falling under the category “Daily Life,” it read: “My offer: good letters, prompt replies, endless variety of subjects--a pleasant exchange of life’s experiences.”

Just below her on the page, Janice Uttley’s ad: “North Carolina humorist wants to know what tickles your funny bone. If you enjoy satire, puns, faux pas, gaffes and have a dry wit, let’s get together and die laughing.”

Drew 35 Pen Pals

From this and several similar ads, Uttley, 49, a secretary in a Charlotte, N.C., advertising firm, now has 35 pen pals, 10 of whom she corresponds with weekly.

What’s happening here? What about the rap that Americans don’t write, that we’re functionally illiterate? We’ve heard it for years and soulfully bowed our heads in acquiescence--blaming television, telephone, the Democrats or just plain bad manners.

Well, obviously the rap’s been wrong. America is a nation of writers. They’ve just been in the closet.

This is where Sikora is at his best. More than a facilitator--not only does he publish the Letter Exchange, he (or rather his 83-year-old mother, Florence) forwards all letters to the appropriate addresses--he is an observer and scholar of the reading and writing phenomenon.

“I think it has to do with the distance between the masses of people and the few specialized people,” he said one recent morning, sitting behind an aged Remington Rand typewriter that is the heart of his cluttered workshop. “You have to understand, Jane Austen wrote all her books to be read aloud. And that was typical. Throughout history there’s been this kind of sense of writers being rooted in their community. But now there’s a frustration of not being able to connect with writers.

“Like the short stories in the New Yorker. I read them, but I’m not there.”

At this, Sikora paused. This was a favorite topic, an important one. Was he making himself clear?

Maybe better to express it as a need to participate. And that’s why letters, he said. “You can never distance yourself with dialogue.”

If this sounds rather academic, that’s the way Sikora is. He likes to think, to theorize, to exchange ideas. And as a form of communication, letters can be particularly gratifying. Letters, after all, require the writer to think about what he is saying, to present ideas in an articulate manner.

Letters have other lures. Andrea Firpo, 26, who does analysis and research for an investment banking firm in New York City, talks of how “in a city of 8.5 million people, I don’t know any of them as well as I know the people I’m writing to.”

Offered a ‘Shoulder’

Firpo’s ad read: “I want to be the person you open up to when you’re: sulking in abject loneliness; feeling wildly creative; when the demon inside you fires passion or anger or yawns with boredom. Or, write me if you want a laugh, an intellectual discourse, an unbiased opinion, a ‘shoulder’ or care to ‘meet’ me in the mail.” She received more than 50 replies.

“Some were so intensely personal,” Firpo said. “The trust they put in you. They made me open up. It was funny because I offered to be the shoulder, but I didn’t offer to give back. I was really touched by the response. It was one of the best experiences of my life.”

And she answered them all.

“Though if a person annoyed me or was prejudiced, I just sent a note saying their values were too different from mine. It’s like real life. Some people you just click more with.”

The fact is, letter writer Janice Uttley said, “there are a lot of lonely people out there. Divorced, widowed, people who need a personal touch. Distance allows you to be candid. It allows you an intimacy. You can talk about things you might not talk about face to face.”

Not Uttley though.

“The writing process, exchange of ideas--that’s what appeals to me.”

Also to Betty Huck, 51, who recently moved to North Hollywood from Ashland, Ore., where she was a free-lance writer.

“I have one lady I write to who sounds like M.F.K. Fisher. She doesn’t get out much, but she writes the most beautiful letters about everyday life. Just going to the store or baby-sitting goldfish. There’s a man from Ohio who writes in sort of free-form stream of consciousness. I tend to write to him in the same vein.”

Topics Range Widely

What do they write about? Anything. Everything. Theresa Dolezal discussed with two or three of her pen pals a Dearborn controversy over barring non-residents from its public parks. Another young man, she said, wants to know about the type of life she led in the 1940s.

“Most talk about what they’re doing. One lady bought an old diary at a garage sale. Oh, there’s no end of things to talk about.”

Too true. The Letter Exchange has ads from people wanting to correspond about the joys of parenting, travel experiences, conversion to Catholicism, romance novels, maintaining good long-term (15 years or more) marriages despite the odds, the traumas of writing and science fiction.

The Letter Exchange also has a category called ghost letters for people who want to correspond in the style of another self. Just one enticing example:

“16th-Century barmaid wishes contact with anyone (rogues, gentlemen/women, church officials, wandering Gypsies, etc.) who will help me find my true parents. Was found as babe in basket with linen hankie, monogrammed ‘KCR.’ I’m blue-eyed brunette, fair skin with freckles, 5’2,” small birthmark on left knee.--Maggie Flynn”

There are also listings for pramles, which Sikora describes as “a round-robin collection of letters circulated among a limited number of correspondents.” Topics range from travel to movies, childhood reminiscences to “Chronicles of the Hack Sword,” a collective fantasy on the adventures of Dorek the Doomed written in the style of the correspondent’s favorite author.

As serious as this whole effort is (most letter writers have such a deep inner need to express themselves that a day without exchanging a letter is like a day without a smile), Sikora also goes for the light touch. The fall edition of the Letter Exchange had cartoons about letter writers, quotations about letters and letter writing, a letter from management explaining why there would be no more free listings (rebellion by the publication’s unpaid staff claiming that doubling their salary was insufficient), six pages of letters to the editor and an essay called “Who Writes Letters?”

(It turns out women do--both historically and as evidenced by the correspondence that passes through the Letter Exchange. Of the publication’s 1,500-plus subscribers, at least two-thirds are females. The reason, Sikora speculates, is “the give-and-take idea.”

(“Women do less of the talk. Men tell things--stories, their opinions, while women keep the conversation going. Women ask the leading questions. Letters put women on a parity.”)

Subscribers are clearly charmed. Finally someone who takes letter writers and letter writing seriously, who is in fact one of them.

For what we’re talking about is a passion. Just listen to Theresa Dolezal: “I scurry around every morning to get my house done so then I can do it. Writing letters is my reward for doing all those dumb things I have to do. The trouble is, I have to force myself to stop. I rarely write a letter under two pages. Mostly it’s three.”

And she adds: “I have letters I wouldn’t trade for anything. You can talk all you like. But it’s gone once you say it.”

America is a nation of writers. They’ve just been in the closet.

Address of the Letter Exchange is P.O. Box 6218, Albany, Calif., 94706.