the habit of wonder

What is the best way to sign your email? The closing, I mean. I’ve long wondered, and one day a long while back I was quite struck by the notion of asking Susan Sontag—because, well, she’d know. Now it’s too late, of course. She would not have written back, in any case, and so on top of being bereft of an answer I would feel bad, though perhaps it is high time that I be snubbed by a better class of people.

And if—implausibly—she did write back? I like to imagine that she would eschew the internetwork entirely and instead write back, months letter, in a chilly yet breezy tone, in a baroque longhand that everyone thought long ago had vanished, on skillfully folded stationery whose thinness evokes the kind of typewriter paper that used to spout holes where the periods should go, though of course she would use dark-blue fountain pen.

I’ve hardly thought about this, you see.

Actually, I have it all figured out; all but the answer, which would be so oblique as to be all but useless. What she would counsel, beneath it all, is to be original; and then she would sign it, With undiminished ennui, Susan Sontag. So I think I’ll steal that. Henceforth I will sign all of my missives With undiminished ennui, at least until my ennui abates.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 18th, 2005 at 2:02 pm (CT) and is filed under Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed.