Electronic elitism through erudite e-mail

Arizona Daily Wildcat He is the Cat who walks by Himself, and all places are alike to him. - Rudyard Kipling, The Cat who walks by Himself

To cut and paste English poet Andrew Marvell, "Had we but world enough and time, this e-mail, lady, were no crime." And many feel that the Electronic Age is sapping the literary tradition of its lifeblood: letters. Thoughtful, insightful, hand-written letters sent by good, old-fashioned post.

For some of us, though, e-mail is all that saves us from isolation and social ostracism. Too busy to return phone calls, too apathetic to write, we are seduced by the immediacy and simplicity of electronic messaging. We are pitted against conventional correspondents and never the twain shall meet.

But now comes Olga Tereshko and her fabulous "Just-So Postcards" website (http://just-so.com). Described as "definitely high-brow literary e-mail postcards," these e-mail missives combine eloquent quotes from the likes of Rilke and Baudelaire and elegant, illustrative paintings (Picasso and Matisse, to name a couple) with the sender's own mellifluous message.

In a slightly more whimsical vein, there are also quotes available from Lewis Carroll, Antoine de Saint-ExupÚry and (you may have guessed this from the site's name) Just So Story-teller Rudyard Kipling, with attendant illustrations.

For those who believe that all art flows from pain, there is also the section titled "Some Russians," wherein Anna Akhmatova mourns, "But in the room of the banished poet / Fear and the Muse stand watch by turn,/ and the night is coming on, / which has no hope of dawn," accompanied by a delightful little interior scene by Edvard Munch. What better setting for Aunt Helen's 50th birthday greeting!

And since electronic stalking is such a growing hobby, check into the Roland Barthes folder, which contains quotes from A Lover's Discourse (Fragments) such as the self-rationalizing "Even as he obsessively asks himself why he is not loved, the amorous subject lives in the belief that the loved object does love him but does not tell him so."

In a quaint nod to the original hard-copy postcards that inspire the site, the electronic cards must be "flipped" over to see the sender's message (and a very realistic stamp and postmark).

As with any e-mail postcard, the recipient must have access to a web browser to view the postcard, entering a location that is sent to the e-mail address to collect the card.

While it's doubtful that the collected e-mails of great authors will ever be collected as important literary material, Just-So Postcards does manage to remind us e-mail junkies that there is life (and literature) beyond the "Send" key.