I've got a box full of letters, think you might like to read

September 21, 2009 10:08 AM

Letters of Note reproduces and transcribes letters from the famous, the infamous, and the not-so-famous.
posted by Horace Rumpole (7 comments total)

We have a good writer, we have the main parts casted & we have a very marketable movie that will not even be hard to make.... - Hunter S. Thompson

There are two things in that sentence that make me wish I had never read it.

Good post though.
posted by Joe Beese at 10:15 AM on September 21, 2009

Richard Ramirez certainly knows how to continue to be terrifying, even in correspondence. What a letterhead.
posted by ignignokt at 10:21 AM on September 21, 2009 [2 favorites]

The Ramirez letter was from a series for Radar magazine where a writer posed as a 10 year old boy and wrote serial killers letters asking for advice.

I tried this, but got no responses. Not one.

There are some good letters on here. The Cats one rules.

"He felt that maybe he should have done something about it, when the 'Cats' performer had his groin in my face."

I want my 6 million dollars!
posted by cjorgensen at 10:28 AM on September 21, 2009

Richard Ramirez certainly knows how to continue to be terrifying, even in correspondence. What a letterhead.

Pretty sure the writer provided that paper for the reply. If you read the letter, he says he's providing Ramirez some paper for his reply.
posted by Ironmouth at 10:43 AM on September 21, 2009

I read that as "here's some paper," but Ramiez was all, "I have my own."
posted by cjorgensen at 11:29 AM on September 21, 2009

Wow. This passage from this letter, written by a man who was about to be sent to Auschwitz, has one of the most perfect descriptions of the situation Holocaust victims found themselves in I have heard or read. I wish I could read Czech...it's almost certainly more heartwrenchingly beautiful in the original language.

Tomorrow I am leaving, seperately from the others. Beginning tomorrow you shall never hear from me again. I shall vanish in the boundless spheres where those had to vanish who recognized and saw, what the whole world looked with crossed arms. We are in the war, we are enemies, we have to die like soldiers. In the next 48 hours my fate shall be accomplished, with me the fate of my wife Gerty. All I am asking you is to take care of our father's grave and if you should find us then bury us by him. Help our own and Gerty's families as much as possible, help them forget all the horrors they had to go through. They will need your help.

I pray that you remain healthy and brave and stay happy with your family and that you may never forget that all you shall hear is nothing compared to what millions of people had to suffer and go through.
posted by nosila at 3:13 PM on September 21, 2009

Interesting site. MetaFilter gets a mention too.
posted by tellurian at 7:02 PM on October 5, 2009