Textual InfidelityE-mail, adultery, and Mark Sanford.

Regardless of what one may think of Sanford's behavior, to this reader of non-fiction and biographies I find it disheartening that more and more people are losing the fine art of letter writing. If I had read Sanford's "letters" many years from now, I may have thought him to be quite the romantic, in spite of his bad judgment or some might say juvenile ramblings.

Old letters convey an intangible something that can never be gotten from a phone call or e-mail. And whether they be damning or praiseworthy, letters provide tangible evidence of the truth. So much history has been preserved in letters that without them how could we ever be trustful of our past.

Thankfully, the telephone and the internet were not around several hundred years ago.

-- dantesfurlough
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I completely agree about the value of letters, though I have to question the idea that "letters provide tangible evidence of the truth." I think that much of any of our communication is driven by telling our audience what they want to hear, and honestly, as a male and a father of daughters made fairly suspicious by my own memories, I have to wonder how much of Sanford's writing was unedited romance pouring from his heart and how much of it was an effort, literally and literarily, to charm the pants off this particular woman.

-- phark
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