3 and DA: Banner #18 for the Celtics

     They were the team to beat from the start. They ended it far ahead of every other team in the standings. The only thing left for these Celtics was to win it all and now they’ve done so, in five games. No qualifications necessary to sum up this season: the Celtics did indeed dominate. Truly: it was their year. Something else to add is that no individual player on the team dominated. The wisdom of relying heavily on a superstar, or giving up depth to add one or two others, took a hit. In the wake of Boston’s victory, I find myself even more interested in the shrewd moves and risks, the yearslong development and luck, necessary to construct a sturdy, balanced championship team and not an expensive, splashy, high-expectation, fragile “super team.”

Though he could barely make a 3 for a long time during this series and fouled out of game 3, Luka Dončić is sure to get his points. After him, it’s Kyrie Irving, who isn’t guaranteed to provide 20- or 30-plus points a night (he had trouble in Boston). After him, I couldn’t say which Maverick would reliably contribute on the offensive end. But what fascinated me about the Celtics is that they never had one threat to target. Jaylen Brown, Finals MVP, might have a relatively quiet night, Jayson Tatum’s own 3-point shooting percentage might plummet, and it never seemed to be fatal. Kristaps Porzingis, in his first game back from injury before suffering another injury in game 2, played like a potential Finals MVP. Derek White (who had his face smashed into the floor, leaving him bloodied with a chipped tooth, in game 5), Jrue Holiday, Al Horford, Sam Hauser, Payton Pritchard (with the dream shot from half court in game 5): always poised, aggressive, and ready to make up the difference. And Brown and Tatum don’t just score but can do most everything.

With 18 championships, the Celtics have become the winningest team in the league. 18! So, this offseason, the most important conversation to be had is about how the Warriors are going to catch up, dammit!

3 and DA: Notes on the Conference Finals, 2024

The East: Celtics vs Pacers

All right, the Celtics didn’t really face much resistance. It’s not that the opposing teams weren’t capable of giving them trouble, fully healthy. But no one was: The Heat was without its leader, Jimmy Butler, and a scorer picked up midseason, “Scary” Terry Rozier. (I’ll always remember Rozier, while he was with the Hornets, for executing one of those fakes so good that everyone, including the audience, looked the wrong way. He did this fake on a behind-the-back pass, freezing his defender, and used that half-second to smoothly score with a finger roll. The commentators went silent for a moment. Then one said: “Now that was nasty.”) Miami: out in five games. The Cavaliers, after beating the rising Magic in seven, were missing a crucial rim protector, Jarrett Allen. Donovan Mitchell was having one of the best playoffs of any individual player. Then he went down in the middle of the series. Cleveland: out in five games. A Celtics starter, Kristaps Porzingis, had been out with an injury since the middle of the Miami series. Boston has everything, though, or just about, including a big that can take his place, Al Horford. The team didn’t miss a beat.

I had to look up what a “pacer” is. This year the team was living up to its name. The Bucks were missing the face of the franchise, Giannis Antetokounmpo. But they still had Khris Middleton. And they had this season’s big name pickup, Damian Lillard—until he went down. Pacers in six. Then Indiana faced off against the rejuvenated Knicks franchise. But New York was the most injured of any team in the playoffs: Julius Randle, out for the season. Bojan Bogdanovic, a recent acquisition from the woeful Pistons, out for the season. Mitchell Robinson, out. OG Anunoby, a recent acquisition from the woeful Raptors, out. Rising star Jalen Brunson was hobbled. More minutes to fewer players means more fatigue and a greater chance of injury. And still the Knicks took it to seven games.

The Pacers came out on top and were back in the Conference Finals.

Game one: In the last seconds, with the Celtics down, Jaylen Brown forced a turnover. Then, in the next play, he got the ball in the corner, hit a clutch three. All tied up. Overtime. Boston goes on to win. Game two: Tyrese Halliburton left with a hamstring injury. Boston won easily. Game three: Without the team’s All-Star, I wasn’t sure it’d be close. But the Pacers were in a position to win, only the team lost in the final minutes. Boston, up three games to zero. No team has ever lost up three-zero. Game four: The Pacers keep it close and take the lead for stretches. And the team had it in the last few minutes. Except execution down the stretch was once more the difference: The Celtics have seen everything. They never looked panicked, took control, and didn’t let the Pacers score another basket. Three close-game, what-if heartbreakers for Indiana before the team was through.

No twist ending here: The favorites have returned to the Finals. Jaylen Brown: Conference Finals MVP.

 

The West: Mavericks vs Timberwolves

I hadn’t been following the Timberwolves that closely through the regular season. The team doesn’t have the prettiest brand of basketball. The offense looked a bit lopsided in favor of rising star Anthony Edwards and All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns. It was the team’s defense, the best in the league, led by four-time Defensive Player of the Year award winner Rudy Gobert and his eight-foot wingspan, that truly set them apart. The T-Wolves have a lot of size. No player on the floor looked like a cone on that end. They hounded opponents, consistently forcing them into numbers from an earlier era of basketball. Undeniably it was effective. The team rose to the third spot in the West and the doubters from the previous season had gone silent.

Still wasn’t expecting what I saw in these playoffs. The Phoenix Suns, with all their stars—Devin Booker, Kevin Durant, and Bradley Beal—healthy, though missing a starter, one of the league’s best three-point shooters, Grayson Allen, were expected to be the worst matchup for Minnesota. The idea behind the construction of the team was unstoppable offensive firepower. And yet, game after game, they were stopped, in roughly the same way. Finally I saved myself time and watched only the highlights of game four. The Suns: swept. Another high-expectation, underwhelming playoff run for the franchise. Next, the T-Wolves faced the defending champs, the Denver Nuggets. Now Denver, at its best, does have some of the prettiest basketball I’ve seen, with the three-time MVP Nikola Jokic at the center of it all. But, after seeing the team play the Lakers in the first round, I wasn’t sure they were at their best. Unlike last year, the Lakers managed to get a win. Not much better, one may think. The Nuggets, however, played from behind most of the series. And Jamal Murray, playing through injury, made career highlight-worthy plays that belied his inconsistency. And who would come off the bench and score, particularly when Jokic sat? The T-Wolves took game one, in Denver, which, with its high altitude, is supposed to be particularly difficult. Fine, I don’t make much of game one victories, anyway. It was game two that proved to be this year’s most shocking: That Minnesota defense made the reigning champs look like a sub-500 team. The frustration was palpable. Coach Michael Malone nearly got tossed out. Jamal Murray was throwing things. I had two thoughts afterward. One: The Nuggets, playing like this, would be lucky to get a face-saving win. (You know it went bad when the opposing team is laughing in the postgame interview.) Two: I had to pay more attention to the T-wolves because this looked like a defining win for a potential champion.

Then the Nuggets, incited by all the commentary counting them out, started looking more like themselves and won the next three. Game six? The Nuggets got blown out. Game seven! Back in Denver. The home team, on paper, had the advantage. The first half went as planned. I believe they built up a 20-point lead or something. But the T-wolves erased it. Perhaps the single most representative image of the series: Jokic getting sandwiched in the paint by the double-team. Anthony Edwards, the 22-year-old leading his team to its first conference finals in two decades, waved farewell to the crowd.

Waiting for them there would be Luka Dončić and the Mavericks.

They took out the Clippers, another high-expectation, underwhelming team (albeit without the face of the franchise, Kawhi Leonard, again). They took out the Oklahoma City Thunder. PJ Washington, fouled on a three-point shot. Made two free throws. Deliberately missed the last, running out the precious few seconds on the clock. And it was over. And, through it all, I felt some aches just watching Luka Dončić. He was walking around tenderly. He kept bleeding at the knee. At one point he fell on his face and injured his tooth. Then, game after game, he hit the step-back three, found the open man, drew the foul, roared, talked back to the crowd…. His running mate, forming a lethal scoring back court, is Kyrie Irving. I tentatively enjoy his game again.

It was Anthony Edwards that eventually slowed down, shoulders slumped, breathing hard, clearly having succumbed to the after effects of going seven games with Denver. And when he misses shots, I'm unsure another T-Wolves player is going to step in and pick up the slack, especially with Dallas’s defense about as stifling as theirs. On the other side: Dončić and Irving could hardly be stopped. The pattern would largely repeat itself through the series. The representative play, from game two: Dončić, with the game on the line, putting the Defensive Player of the Year on an oil slick and hitting the three to seal the game. It's what he does. Conference Finals MVP: Luka Dončić. He makes his first Finals appearance as the best player.

TSOP

     I’ve heard this one before. As Thom Bell puts it near the end of John A. Jackson’s A House on Fire: the Rise and Fall of Philadelphia Soul (2004): “Just like the Motown sound, the Memphis sound, just like anybody’s sound, anywhere, it starts from nothing, it becomes something, it gets big, it lasts for a while, it fades, and it goes away.” Or, from another, no less stereotypical angle: there’s the struggle to get a foothold in the industry, the breakthrough, the commercial and artistic peak, the internal discord (always about who is and isn’t getting paid or receiving recognition or given space to develop), the defections, the commercial and artistic decline, and the lawyers.

Jackson provides context because he must, writing about black boys, Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Bell, who grew up to be the architects of Philly Soul, after establishing themselves in a racist system during one of the most turbulent periods of US history. Only it’s rather potted. What’s more, as the writer explains in the introduction, Gamble and Huff didn’t participate (and felt the need to give him a hard time merely for asking them to). Still, plenty of session musicians, singers, songwriters, engineers, and producers do speak to him but he doesn’t fully flesh them out. Nor are there many noteworthy scenes or anecdotes. …Nor is it loaded with insightful critical assessments. …Nor is it animated by the sublime music he describes. The primary value of the book is information. While it fails to distinguish itself on several levels within a familiar arc, by the end, the reader should at least have a rough outline of what happened and the times in which it happened, background on essential contributors unknown to the majority of listeners, some fun and not-so-fun facts, and a map to obscure albums and artists.

Gamble visits a girl’s house and notices her brother, a fellow high school student, playing the piano, and turns his attention to him. This is the first meeting between Gamble, who sang but never learned to play an instrument, and Bell, who would learn to play an additional eighteen instruments. Later, the gregarious Gamble would pair up with the taciturn Leon Huff, who played a real nice piano too, though he wasn’t formally trained. They gained wider exposure in the late 60s with a few hits: “Expressway to Your Heart” (inspired by the recent construction of an expressway in Center City), “Cowboys to Girls,” a Jerry Butler song that isn’t among my favorites (try “Never Gonna Give You Up” instead). But, separately, Thom Bell was the mastermind behind the Delfonics, from forming the group to co-writing songs to playing nearly every instrument on the debut hit, “La-La Means I Love You,” to writing every musical note (no improv allowed) on top of producing. Then, after three albums, feeling as though he didn’t have any more ground to cover with them, and tiptoeing away from the drama and upheaval within the group, he became the mastermind of the Stylistics, from advising lead singer Russell Thompkins, Jr. on how to use his voice to starting them off, alongside his new writing partner, Linda Creed, with their own sterling hits such as “Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)” and “You Are Everything.” As I began to wonder how Gamble and Huff would compete with that, the O’Jays blow up with “Back Stabbers” and “Love Train.” Then Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes do too, with such songs as “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” and “The Love I Lost.” And back-and-forth through the 70s.

A side note: Up to now I’ve kept my distance from Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes because I was always confused by them. Fans at the time were too, greeting Teddy Pendergrass, the group’s lead singer, as “Harold.” (A shortlived solution once it began to irritate him: Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes featuring Teddy Pendergrass. As this episode hints, soon it would just be: Teddy Pendergrass.) I owe this book for re-introducing me to them.  “The Love I Lost,” one of the first disco singles, as melancholy as it is joyous, perfected the genre earlier than I thought, almost on arrival. For an indelible image of radiant youth and vitality, check out Teddy Pendergrass and the Blue Notes on Soul Train singing (that is, lip-syncing to) this very song before a rapturous crowd.

In the early 60s, Gamble and Bell were barred from entering the building where the Cameo-Parkway label was headquartered. With the hits stacking up, they, along with Huff, had the dough to form a real estate business and bought the building. A sweet measure of success. However, delving further into the politics of the music makers, particularly Gamble’s, mostly doesn’t enhance the listening experience. He and Huff co-wrote a pro-Vietnam War song. Once, he found room on a Billy Paul record to insert an anti-abortion message. (Women artists were hardly ever prominent in the label’s heyday.)  At around the time of the book’s publication, he’s publicly questioning the value of integration. Elsewhere, Jackson offers this shoddy defense against the black critics of Gamble’s appearance at the RNC in 2000: “But what these critics fail to recognize is that, first and foremost, Kenny Gamble is a capitalist. ‘I support people, not [political] parties,’ said Gamble, a registered Independent, in 2003. ‘It’s all business to me.’” This is where the writer ends his argument: ignoring or missing the contradiction, totally credulous and assuming everyone should rest assured now. As though a capitalist doesn’t have politics (admitted or not). And this, after reporting on the number of people who left Philadelphia International Records feeling exploited for their work. Racial barriers to entry aside, Gamble and Huff largely recreated the unsavory conditions under which they apprenticed. Luckily the book rewards the reader with a scene that hilariously encapsulates the harmless figure, who operates above (or beneath) the fray, better than I can:

At one of CBS’s annual conventions, Harry Coombs handed Alexenburg a preview cassette of the O’Jay’s “For the Love of Money.” The Epic Records president stood up in front of the entire CBS Sales and Promotion department and introduced the song as the next release from Philadelphia International. Alexenburg then reminded the crowd that Gamble and Huff’s company ‘has made you people nothing but’—at which point he sang the lyric, ‘money, money, money.’ The audience of over a thousand CBS people stood and cheered.

Once more what would be too heavyhanded for satire turns out to be reality.

So, like many other cases, the Philly Sound, when examined more closely, isn’t a pure sound. Without fair dealing, flexibility, and talent cultivation, the label eventually hemorrhaged key personnel. Some even sued. Not only was it a stain on the label’s legacy, as the 70s turned into the 80s, it ultimately harmed future productions.

Although there was always filler. Sometimes this resulted in tracks such as the Stylistics’s “Country Living,” which I can see as montage music in an abysmal farm comedy. But sometimes it resulted in music to start the day to, such as Lou Rawls’s lightly funky version of “Pure Imagination.” A Soul Willy Wonka. A Philly Wonka. 

3 and DA: Notes on the 2024 Play-In Games

 April 16^th, 2024

    Last playoffs, the Warriors were eliminated in the second round by the Lakers (yeah, well, four!), who were then swept in the Western Conference Finals by the Nuggets (four). The Finals pitted two players on my personal starting five against each other, Nikola Jokic and Jimmy Butler. I got the feeling back during the middle of the regular season that the Nuggets would win it all when Aaron Gordon had one of the greatest dunks I’ve ever seen, a Christmas Day gift during over time, on Landry Shamet. (You know, I want to take this time to compliment Shamet: his shoes stayed on.) But in the East, the Heat fought back from the very edge, the second round of the play-in games, to get to the Finals, confirming for fans, in case they didn’t already know, that one can never count out this Miami squad, Erik Spoelstra, and Jimmy Buckets. Though they were lumpy, especially after another seven-game war with the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals. And ultimately Jokic, the Serbian superstar big man drafted in the second round who had triple-doubles almost nightly, Michael Malone, and the Nuggets prevailed, bringing the first NBA championship to Denver in its 50-plus year history.

This season: The Nuggets, in pursuit of a dynastic run, are in position to repeat, sitting in second going into the playoffs, just behind the young, inexperienced, but undeniable Oklahoma City Thunder, led by rising Canadian superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who does that dance in the paint like no other. The Heat, meanwhile, are in much the same position they were a year ago: the play-in (like the Warriors, who must win two elimination games, on the other team’s court, for a chance to meet the Thunder in the first round—needless to say, a tough road to the top). I don’t claim to know much about balling. But I will say this: it took me…three regular season games to decide that the Celtics, with its new starting five, would dominate, and they did even when Kristaps Porzingis was out. With them, there’s one fact I’ll keep in mind: almost no championships have been won in NBA history by a team without a league MVP (such as Jokic or Steph Curry or Giannis Antetokounmpo, to take the three most recent examples). One of the only exceptions had a previous Finals MVP. And, though they had the best record in the league by a significant margin and earn home court advantage through the entire playoffs, the East has at least a few teams that I’m sure won’t let them cruise back to the Finals….

 

April 17^th, 2024

Lakers vs. Pelicans, in New Orleans: Free throw disparity. The Lakers got to the line a lot more and made most everything. As Kevin Harlan and Reggie Miller discussed how many fouls they were drawing, LeBron James drew a foul and winked at them. Injury. Zion Williamson was having a game worthy of his star player, first-option status, leading all scorers. By the fourth quarter, the Pelicans had closed the gap. They had momentum. Then, with about three minutes left, Williamson landed awkwardly after an offensive possession and went limping off the court, to the locker room. It’s one reason there are doubts about him: He’s on the heavier side but plays fast and leaps high. So far in his career, as one might predict with his combination of size and explosiveness, he’s proved to be injury-prone. The Lakers held on to a slim lead and got the W. They claim the seventh spot and face off against the reigning champs in the first round.

Warriors vs. Kings, in Sacramento: This year the fair weather fans booed the Warriors at home. To be sure, it was a rather rough season, on and off the court. The core is relatively old. And a question for every team with a superstar is: who’s going to take over when he’s resting on the bench or out for a stretch? Jonathan Kuminga has shown marked improvement and Klay Thompson is capable of having 30-plus points on the night. But there didn’t seem to be a consistent supporting player on the offensive end for Steph Curry. Still, this is only a couple of years removed from a championship that extended a dynastic run. The Warriors also have impactful rookies (Trayce Jackson-Davis, Brandin Podziemski) and solid veterans that put together win streaks. The Rockets, with their own lengthy streak, nearly seized the tenth spot. Then Tari Eason felt the need to taunt Golden State with a Warriors movie reference: “Warriors, come out to play.” That was uncalled for. And it appears he forgot how that movie ends. Now he knows! So I waved farewell to the “fans,” to the Rockets, and thought Golden State could put up a fight, especially against a Kings team missing two key players.

Not on Tuesday. The Kings controlled most of the game, preventing the Warriors from establishing flow on offense. Steph Curry’s shots were almost entirely difficult. Klay Thompson made zero of his. In the end, the starters were taken off the floor. I’m happy that the Kings have had more success in recent years, De’Aaron Fox is a blur. But I’m not that happy. Kings: W. They face the Pelicans next. Warriors: Damn. Blown out. The trade speculation and rumors start with them.

 

April 18^th, 2024

Heat vs. 76ers, in Philadelphia. On this night I discovered that 76ers fans are quick to boo! In the first half, the home team looked outmatched. Reigning MVP Joel Embiid, still recovering from injury, wasn’t at his best. Tyrese Maxey didn’t fill the void. Tobias Harris, always under pressure to perform well against Jimmy Butler, shot air balls. The team had a number of turnovers. And there was a noticeable lack of energy. But there was a whole nother half to go and the lead the Heat built wasn’t insurmountable. I thought: Dry those tears, people. Maybe they’re sore about the organization’s history of post-season disappointments and setbacks, react unfavorably to any play that resembles past failures. Then the second half came. By the end of the third quarter, the 76ers steadily looked invigorated. Nicolas Batum, a recent trade acquisition and veteran player off the bench, hit nearly all his 3s, sending jolts through the crowd with each and far surpassing his regular season average, and was dogged on defense. Mike Breen, reflecting on playoff basketball: “You never know who’s going to emerge as a hero.” The game was tied up with a minute to go. Praise the DJ, who put on the Rocky theme, “Gonna Fly Now.”

76ers: W, by one point. The team takes the seventh spot and face off against the best Knicks team in decades.

Bulls vs. Hawks, in Chicago. I’ve learned that there are two kinds of basketball: essential and inessential. I enjoy seeing where any team is at developmentally through most of the regular season, looking for standout players who could bolster another roster. But as the playoffs approach, my focus turns to the teams that have the best chance of winning it all (them and, this season, a rookie with San Antonio who’s getting some attention, Victor Wembanyama). This game would go past midnight and I value sleep. And neither the Bulls nor the Hawks, dealing with injuries and middling play, stand any chance against a healthy Celtics squad. For the purposes of saving time: this is inessential basketball. First quarter highlights: I went with raviolis. While the water boiled, I washed dishes. Still had a good buzz going. Guinness is the preferred beer of DA playoff coverage….

The Bulls had their biggest quarter of the season: 40 points. Alex Caruso, the ace defender and all-around helpful player, got injured by his own teammate, Andre Drummond, who was jogging back on defense and stepped on his foot. He didn’t play the rest of the game. But the Bulls pressed forward anyway, with a career-high from Coby White. Trae Young was a week from full recovery after a hand injury and came back anyway. He didn’t look like himself. Bulls: W. They move on to face the Heat in Miami.

 

April 19^th, 2024

Bulls vs. Heat, in Miami. No Jimmy Butler but the Heat didn’t look the least bit unsure without their leader. The team went on an early run and commanded the game from there. The play of the night: Tyler Herro, who would end it with a near triple-double, charging toward the basket, passes behind his back midstride to Caleb Martin, who hits a three. Slow motion on the two slapping hands. Near the close, the crowd began chanting: “We want Boston!” The Heat are 0-3 against the Celtics in the regular season. That fact means less with this team. Heat: W. They take the eighth spot in the East.

Pelicans vs Kings, in New Orleans. Pelicans, without Zion Williamson: W, eighth spot in the West. (Cut of beef, steamed broccoli, glass of cranberry juice.) Next, they face Oklahoma City. 

The Art of Letter- (or Email-) Writing

     You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you—no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your whole life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose.

From Letters to a Young to Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell (1986)

Despite Rilke’s hyperbole and scorn for literary criticism, the first letter of the collection, from which I excerpt the above passage, is possibly the best in the book, fit to be copied whole, handed out, and discussed on day one of an introductory writing course I’d never teach. But whether the reader agrees about its merits and moves on to the next may depend on one’s tolerance for tautological language. An article in The Guardian written using AI offers an objectively egregious example, with the abuse of the sentence beginning: “Believe me.” The phrase serves no purpose and it’s absurd to recycle. (The future is here.) Recently though, reading Christopher Hitchens’s piece on a new translation of Proust, “The Acutest Ear in Paris,” I encountered a murkier debate on the subject. Lydia Davis faults an earlier Proust translator for his redundancies. Hitchens responds with evidence of Davis committing the same error—except it doesn’t count, I think, because it’s functional, repetition for the sake of rhythm, rhetorical effect. Hitchens himself, an otherwise vigilant stylist, could be accused of the occasional redundancy, one of the banes of the journalist with a deadline to meet. We descend into ceaseless caviling. No one who’s misspelled a word or forgotten a comma knows how to write. And in this short missive of nine double-spaced pages, Rilke (or his translator) uses the word “silent” four times. There are those who would consider this disqualifying. I’m one of those who deem such readers oversensitive.

But I wouldn’t assign Letters in its entirety and, while it provides the form to one of the secondary inspirations behind this very column, I hesitate to recommend it now. The more letters Rilke sends, the more his limitations show, and the less keen I am to defend him. Aside from common blemishes, eccentric stylistic choices abound and distract:

Sex is difficult; yes.

…learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life is—: solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves.

It is true that many young people who love falsely, i.e., simply surrendering themselves and giving up their solitude (the average person will of course always go on doing that—), feel oppressed by their failure and want to make the situation they have landed in livable and fruitful in their own, personal way—.

They’re impersonal, too. Rilke has hardly anything to say about his surroundings or what’s going on in his life, doesn’t exactly invite the reader into his confidence, doesn’t allow him to conceive much of an idea of who the writer is. Without additional layers of language and color, the book’s lone draw is advice, some of which is no draw at all. In one letter, for instance, he discourages the use of irony in favor of an examination of “serious Things” (which I took as a reminder not to neglect irony). And in every one he adopts the same tone: avuncular, humorless, preachy. Midway through the book I started squirming as if I were really sitting through a long, tedious sermon with just enough pith to keep me from dozing off.

The writer doesn’t want to dash off a letter (or most likely an email, these days) only to agonize over mistakes and paltriness. But taking your time risks causing offense, or adding the work of an apologetic preamble, or dampening the exchange. Based on their lack of polish, it would seem Rilke never intended these letters to be read by anyone but his correspondent, a stranger. Either that or sapience developed before skill in translating it to the page and judgment about what to expand upon or excise. Quality can be further reduced by the quantity of messages one is compelled to send. However, a writer planning on assembling a book out of letters or emails and crafting them toward that end would, I suspect, be trading self-consciousness for true candor and playfulness, two of the chief pleasures of writing (and reading) them. Forget the audience. Best to write to a correspondent doing nothing more than properly holding up your end of a conversation. Enduring aesthetic appeal as an accident. Perhaps even a measure of love.