Good art. Stories are sad.
In January this year we created the Unlettered Enthusiasm Department to deal with the deluge of correspondence (seventeen spam mails, to be precise) that we had received since the Outsider plopped itself on the interwebs. The department is managed by Smith.
We did, however, receive one letter from a real reader. Ms. S., from the Netherlands, said:
“Good art. Stories are sad.”
Thank you, Ms. S.! Your letter was the first response we received from a reader. It was brief, yes, but it was real.
All of us got quite irresponsibly drunk that evening. Your feedback (and the booze) brought us great joy: Pica is a fan of the Dutch masters, and was thrilled; Smith attempted to write a poem in your honour using only your letter as input tokens and spat out a list of (what we think are) Dutch cheeses; your letter now hangs framed above Meursault’s desk; Albert spent the evening staring angrily it.
Smith’s e-mail filters have successfully blocked all automated spam; we suspected that he was, perhaps, being excessively enthusiastic with his filtering but our fears were unfounded–five letters written by real people reached my inbox:
- An invitation to invest in an oil-rig off the coast of Angola.
- A letter asking for our postal address to receive a gift of a million dollars in crypto-currency.
- A request for a “catalog with prices of the goods that you sell.”
- A legal missive “from the desk of Barrister [redacted].”
The fifth was from S.
The Unlettered Enthusiasm Department now has a list of rules.
We write. We read. Then we drink.
With thanks, and a raised glass,
—The Editor