In the film Metropolitan , there’s an exchange that has always struck me as both funny and devastating. Tom Townsend, earnest and slightly wounded, asks his high school love interest, Serena Slocum about their correspondence: Tom: “You threw away all the letters I wrote you?” Serena: “I throw away nearly everything. I don’t want to go through the rest of my life with the mail I got when I was sixteen.” Tom: “I’m surprised. Someone goes through the trouble of writing a real letter—I save it. People don’t write many personal letters anymore.” Tom, the archivist; Serena, the minimalist; and the rest of us floating somewhere between keeping just enough paper to feel sentimental, but not enough to require zoning permits for storage. I thought of that scene while sitting beside the shredder in our basement office that sounded increasingly triumphant with each page it devoured. I had decided whether bravely or foolishly, to unclutter decades of correspondence in what I had proudly collected t...
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