Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    



Fawn Fitter, <fsquared> has recently launched a new blog project:

<http://a-certain-party-i-love.tumblr.com/>

Fawn says of the project,

"When I bought a box of old papers at a flea market in 2002, I planned to
sort through the contents and resell the most interesting bits on eBay —
but that was before I realized that the box contained more than 100 love
letters dated 1940-1943, all in a single hand. I put them into chronological
order, began reading, and quickly realized I’d stumbled on something
wonderful: a love story that also included popular culture, left-wing
politics, and of course, the encroaching inevitability of World War II."


And about Fawn herself:

Fawn Fitter has been writing for a living for more than 25 years. She's
written hundreds of articles for publications ranging from Cosmopolitan to
Entrepreneur; one book, Working in the Dark, the first book about navigating
the workplace while coping with a mood disorder; and a lot of marketing copy
for the technology industry. A WELL member since 1992, she helped launch and
still hosts the Byline conference for freelance writers. She's also a
history buff, a flea market fan, and a nosy parker who would read everyone's
letters and diaries if she could. Which is why she's so excited about this
project.

You can find Fawn on twitter: @fsquared

And you can find out more about her professional life at:

<http://fawnfitter.com/>


Thanks for joining us, Fawn. I am super-excited about this project.
  

    

Hi, Fawn. I can't wait to get into the stories that will unfold on the new
blog.

Once again, that's:  <http://a-certain-party-i-love.tumblr.com/>

But before we get into the actual story discovered inside one fortunate flea
market purchase, tell me a little about a more personal love affair: the one
between you and flea markets.

Has this been a life-long love? On-again/Off-again? Do flea-markets love you
back? Do you ever break up and get back together?

This topic is going to be LURID, peeps.
  

    
My attraction to flea markets is passionate to the point of scandal. 

I've always loved yard sales, antique shops, that kind of thing -- I
can't resist the hope of finding a treasure among other people's old
castoffs. When I lived in Boston, I went to the Brimfield Fair, which
is basically 5 miles of antiques fair, and practically swooned with
excitement. Here in the Bay Area, I've scored great finds at both
Alemany and Alameda Point, everything from picture frames to vintage
sweaters to a 1949 Parker '51' fountain pen with sterling silver cap.
(I also love fountain pens, but that's for another topic, namely the
fountain pens topic in the Obsess conference.) So yeah, I'd say flea
markets love me almost as much as I love them.

I try to stay away, I do. It's an expensive habit. But it's soooooo
satisfying that I can't give it up. Oh, flea markets, I wish I could
quit you.
  

    


So, there are two intros to the story on the tumblr in question.

<http://a-certain-party-i-love.tumblr.com/post/73552133767/how-i-got-here>

(That's about how Fawn got here, see how her titling gives away bits of
information? She's a pro.)

and:

<http://a-certain-party-i-love.tumblr.com/post/73553096238/introducing-leon-
and-elly>

(Again, crafty titles let us jump right in.)

Before we get into their story, let's stick with your tawdry flea market
affair, which you admit above that you've been paying for. (This is the
gotcha journalism of the new Inkwell.)

I live with an avid flea-marketer/estate-sale-goer/dumpster-diver, and we
have a name for the box of crap genre of finds. We call them: a box of crap.
You're a writer, a teller of stories. How quickly did you go from looking
for random treasures to covet or sell on eBay to realizing that you had a
box of story? And, as a follow-up, once you figured it out, were you like
totally freaking the hell out?
  

    
Well...here's a lurid revelation: I am a voyeur. 

I grew up on Anne Frank's diary and Harriet the Spy. If I'd had a big
sister who kept a journal, you'd better believe I'd have crept into her
room to sneak-read it. As an adult, I absolutely love published
journals and letters. I really, really, no I mean it REALLY love other
people's private papers. So as you can imagine, this wasn't the first
time I'd bought a batch of love letters at a flea market, although it
was the biggest batch ever. 

So yeah, I knew I had a box of story as soon as I realized the box
contained multiple letters in the same handwriting -- story was what I
was looking for! Not necessarily to do anything but roll around in and
enjoy, though. 

But then I started reading some of the letters and discovered that
they were literate and funny and clever and jam-packed with interesting
details, and I realized I had a really GOOD story.

I didn't freak the hell out until I realized all the other stuff in
the box was from the same family. That's when I started thinking I
might be able to 1) track them down and return their family papers, and
2) get them to talk to me about them. That's when I started actually
flailing around with excitement.
  

    
Also, having seen some of the stuff your resident box-of-crap-finder
brings home, I know I am a rank amateur by comparison.
  

    


I know you are early in the process of getting this blog going/sharing
the story with us, but HOLY CRAP, just a few posts in and we find out
you met Leon! Not just Leon, but his daughter.

Peeps, here's where Fawn talks about Finding Leon--

<http://a-certain-party-i-love.tumblr.com/post/73959449188/finding-leon>

--and being able to return his own love letters to him years later.

I am super-excited for the story you found in the Box Of Crap™ but
having the actual writer of those letters and his family in the
picture! As you are now looking at sharing this story with the world
and putting into a larger context, does knowing Leon's family could be
reading it give you a certain approach? (Maybe not approach-- I guess I
wonder if it adds a kind of self-consciousness.) 

(And peeps, check the whole thing out-- a couple other posts I haven't
mentioned yet have excerpts from Leon's letters. It sure does make one
wistful for a golden age of letter writing, when people didn't write a
whole parenthetical paragraph that started with the words, "And
peeps.")
  

    
I'm not sure how knowing Leon's family affects the way I'm thinking
about this. If his kids had any objections or concerns, I would try to
be as respectful of that as possible, but Leon knew I wanted to publish
his letters and gave me his written permission to do so, and in the
end, that's what matters most.

Fortunately, his kids don't object. Earlier this year I spent several
months transcribing the letters from the photocopies I made before I
gave the originals back to Leon, and once I was done making the
transcription, I sent it to both his daughter Robin and his son Roger.
Robin was thrilled from the start. Roger was happy to cooperate with
me, but preferred at first not to read the letters himself because it
seemed to him like an invasion of their privacy. I told him at the time
that I absolutely understood -- nobody wants to think about their
parents having sex! -- but that I didn't think he'd read anything that
would make him uncomfortable. I got email from him last week saying
that he finally decided to read them and that while he was amazed at
how "crazy in love" Leon was, nothing in there was especially
surprising or shocking.

The family's story in the many years AFTER the letters is good, too,
but I'm saving that for later. 

And Leon's most common phrase was "Ennehoe," for "anyhow," so "and
peeps" is nothing!
  

    

Just from what you have posted so far, I have a time-travel crush on Leon.

by the way, the FAQ mentions Fawn's meetings with Leon, what he was like in
person, and starts to lay out the cast of characters.

<http://a-certain-party-i-love.tumblr.com/faq>
  

    
also have crish on Leon! "A side room was the men's c-----r which I visited
once as I am not like you." hahahahaha

fawn this seems like a marvelous project!
  

    
Leon must have been a force of nature at 25, I'm just saying. I think
the more I post, the more people will be crushing on him!
  

    

(OK, I am so slow... men's... what? center?)
  

    
Crapper.
  

    
fawn, what's your greatest ambition for all this? documentary? coffeetable
book?
  

    
A few years back, a New York Times intern wrote a book called The Red
Leather Diary about a diary she plucked from a trash heap that turned
out to have been written by a rebellious upper-class teenage girl in 
1920s New York City. She reconstructed as much of the girl's life as
she could given the contents of the diary and eventually managed to
track her down as a 90-something retired in Florida. 

That's what I'd like to do with Leon's letters and Elly's diary,
except more so. I want to put them into the context of what was going
on in both the US (which was heading toward war) and the wider world
(which was already at war). I want to get a sense of what Cleveland in
1940 was like and why Leon might have decided his best bet for building
up a marriage nest egg was to take a job in Washington DC. I want to
research how the US Army during WWII usually treated soldiers who had
been Communist Party members or otherwise not entirely politically
kosher, and I want to find out whether Leon's experience was typical. I
want to get into the long history of left-wing politics among American
Jews in the '30s. And so forth. Popular history, with Leon and Elly as
the springboard.
  

    
got it
  

    
What a great story.  I've got the blog bookmarked.  

Fawn, have you come across anything similar before that got you
intrigued, but you didn't follow through out of concern for effects of
publishing on the survivors/living descendants of those involved?
  

    
fawn --- have you thought of what kinds of publishers you might want for
this? epublishing not great for stuff with images (and i assume this book
would have them)
  

    
loris, I haven't considered it yet, honestly. I still need to build up
an audience, write a book proposal, find an agent... One thing at a
time. 

debunix, I've bought small groups of love letters before, but never
did anything other than read and enjoy them and then sell them on eBay.
Most of the time there were no more than a handful of letters, and
they never had enough detail to let me even start looking for the
writers' descendants. There are also ownership issues, as well -- I
might have physical possession of a letter, but if I'm understanding
copyright correctly, I don't have the right to publish it until I have
permission from the person who wrote it or that person's heirs, or
until that person has been dead for 70 years.

I've definitely never found anything that made me worry about what the
effects might be of publishing it. I'm not even sure what that might
be. A secret second family? A connection to a serial killer?
  

    
oh just imagining what the finished project might look like...
  

    
Wow, reading your blog post about how you got to meet Leon gave me
chills! I so hope you find a publisher and get to see your project to
its completion. But meanwhile, thanks for sharing it on your blog.
  

    
What a great find, and a wonderful project. I have a peculiar kind of
find. A friend who was going through her aunt's things was ruthlessly
culling the photographs. She came across and wanted to throw out a
collection of about 40 2x3 mug shots, probably taken in Ketchikan,
Alaska in the 1920's. Almost all were men, all holding a number in
front of them. Written on the backs of many of them were notations such
as "robbery, 18 months."  There are no names.
My friend believes that her grandfather, an optometrist who was also a
photographer, must have taken them for the police. I couldn't bear to
see them thrown out, and am trying to figure out what to do with them.
The picture quality is excellent, and the people have such character.
It's very compelling.
  

    

fawn i am loving this topic and your blog. do the letters come from a time 
when they were already committed to each other or was there some wooing? 
  

    
It's clear from very early on that the reason Leon had left Elly
behind in Cleveland to take a job in DC was to earn money so they had
something in the bank to start their married life on. They weren't
OFFICIALLY engaged yet, in the sense of his having bought her a ring
(one of the things he was saving up for!), but it was clear they had
already decided they were going to get married.

Still, I also get the impression that right until shortly before the
wedding, he was still afraid she might change her mind.
  

    
Blog updates on Monday and Thursday mornings, by the way. Which means
that there's a new post up today!
  

    
I love this so far, I'm so looking forward to seeing it unfold.  With
Leon's first letter I find myself obsessing of two unimportant details.

The first, when he teases her about the c____r, is he referring to her
having a smaller bladder, or to her having a shyness about using
public restrooms at all?  I assume the former, but have loved ones from
whom the opposite interpretation might apply.

The second, only slightly less trivial curiosity, I wonder about the
meaning of his comment about the smoking car where " believe it or not,
a pipeful lasts one hour in there."  I wonder if he is referring to
the thickness of the smoke being enough to just enjoy the secondhand
smoke of the other smokers, or if convivial smokers kept him supplied
with tobacco.