Trying to Find the Name of a Story...

[The Emperor]

...about a young man and a young woman who meet and hit it off. They bring light to each other's life. They build each other up. They edify and educate one another. They recall past experiences to one another. There's one catch: their whole relationship/friendship exists through letters. They lead completely different lives but they become very close and no one knows about it except them. They see each other rarely and their friendship exists only in the letters.

My problem is I don't even recall the author's name. Can any of you literary buffs help me out on this one? Someone suggested Hemingway and the other Whitman, but I've yet to find the story.

[5Stars]

A recent book, or an older book?


That might help narrow it down.

[Hostile]

Do you have an era? There is a whole genre of epistolary letters where the story is revealed only in letters.

Samuel Richardson had a couple, "Clarissa" and "Pamela." I freaking hated that 2nd one so bad I would never read the first. That book was probably the low light of my college degree.

Jane Austen is perhaps the most famous epistolary novelist, but what you are describing doesn't sound to me like "Pride and Prejudice" or "Sense and Sensibility."

"Dracula" and "Frankenstein" are both from that genre, but not anywhere near the plot you describe.

One that I had to study that cracked me up was "Emmeline." (I think that was the name.) I read it after Pamela. I forget the author, but I remember reading it in one day because I was home sick and laughing at one character in particular.

[SaltwaterServr]

You have me at a loss with it as well.

84 Charing Cross Road was by far my favorite epistolary style, and favorite adaptation to film. You cannot go wrong with Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft. Saw it for the first time when I stayed home from school, sick in bed. Showtime ran it one day.

If you've never read it, Color Purple is also epistolary.

[Sam I Am]

I've never seen the movie, but wasn't "The Lake House" something like that? Not sure if it was book before a movie.

[CowboyMcCoy]

Emp, can you give me a few more details?

[rkell87]

Originally Posted by The Emperor

...about a young man and a young woman who meet and hit it off. They bring light to each other's life. They build each other up. They edify and educate one another. They recall past experiences to one another. There's one catch: their whole relationship/friendship exists through letters. They lead completely different lives but they become very close and no one knows about it except them. They see each other rarely and their friendship exists only in the letters.

My problem is I don't even recall the author's name. Can any of you literary buffs help me out on this one? Someone suggested Hemingway and the other Whitman, but I've yet to find the story.

sounds kinda like the film called the lake house

[The Emperor]

Hey, all. Thanks for the help in tracking down this story. I can say it isn't The Lake House.

I've never read the story. It's one that a friend of mine tried to tell me about, but even she didn't know the name or the author. Consequently, I don't know if it's new or old. She was the one who gave me the leads of Hemingway and Whitman.

The only book or movie I've heard of that sounds like the plot is Love in the Time of Cholera. But that's not it because the protagonists only saw each other in public and hardly communicated period.

Originally Posted by Hostile

Do you have an era? There is a whole genre of epistolary letters where the story is revealed only in letters.

I like The Sorrows of Young Werther. But it's more revealed through journal writings.

Originally Posted by Hostile

Samuel Richardson had a couple, "Clarissa" and "Pamela." I freaking hated that 2nd one so bad I would never read the first. That book was probably the low light of my college degree.

No, those aren't it either. Gosh, that's horrible. No wonder you didn't read the first one. It's essentially the same plot.

Originally Posted by Hostile

Jane Austen is perhaps the most famous epistolary novelist, but what you are describing doesn't sound to me like "Pride and Prejudice" or "Sense and Sensibility."

No, it's not either one of those.

Originally Posted by Hostile

"Dracula" and "Frankenstein" are both from that genre, but not anywhere near the plot you describe.

Considering it deals with a young man and a young woman, it might!

Originally Posted by Hostile

One that I had to study that cracked me up was "Emmeline." (I think that was the name.) I read it after Pamela. I forget the author, but I remember reading it in one day because I was home sick and laughing at one character in particular.

Well, thanks for your help, Hostile.

Thanks to all of you, too. Keep tossing ideas out there because I'm determined to find it and read it.

[The Emperor]

Originally Posted by SaltwaterServr

You have me at a loss with it as well.

84 Charing Cross Road was by far my favorite epistolary style, and favorite adaptation to film. You cannot go wrong with Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft. Saw it for the first time when I stayed home from school, sick in bed. Showtime ran it one day.

If you've never read it, Color Purple is also epistolary.

Thanks, Salty. I'll check those out as well.


EDIT -- I remember The Color Purple now. It's that Oprah and Whoopi Goldberg movie. I almost saw the play rendition of that out in Washington, D.C. but was too pressed for time to go.

[Hostile]

You've got me stumped. I honestly do not remember a Hemingway novel that was epistolary, but that doesn't mean there isn't one.

Walt Whitman however, was a poet, not a novelist. Certainly not epistolary in his essays which are the only prose I know of.

I wish you could give me even one more detail, I might be able to ask one of my literary professors whom I still keep in contact with.

[SaltwaterServr]

Originally Posted by Hostile

You've got me stumped. I honestly do not remember a Hemingway novel that was epistolary, but that doesn't mean there isn't one.

Walt Whitman however, was a poet, not a novelist. Certainly not epistolary in his essays which are the only prose I know of.

I wish you could give me even one more detail, I might be able to ask one of my literary professors whom I still keep in contact with.

I can see Hemingway doing an epistolary. One letter would be 34 pages describing a street scene while he paid the bill of his lunch at a cafe in Paris, the reply would be two sentences describing Europe.

[Hostile]

Originally Posted by SaltwaterServr

I can see Hemingway doing an epistolary. One letter would be 34 pages describing a street scene while he paid the bill of his lunch at a cafe in Paris, the reply would be two sentences describing Europe.

That'd be Victor Hugo.

[JustDezIt]

you've got mail

[The Emperor]

Originally Posted by JustDezIt

you've got mail

Nothing is showing up in my inbox, aside from a PM from CowboyMcCoy that I'll address once I feel like talking football again.

[The Emperor]

Originally Posted by Hostile

You've got me stumped. I honestly do not remember a Hemingway novel that was epistolary, but that doesn't mean there isn't one.

Walt Whitman however, was a poet, not a novelist. Certainly not epistolary in his essays which are the only prose I know of.

I wish you could give me even one more detail, I might be able to ask one of my literary professors whom I still keep in contact with.

Why I didn't think it was Hemingway was because he never wrote that kind of content. He mostly wrote about Paris or the Spanish Civil War. At least, that's what his short stories seem to be chock full of.

And I wish I did have that one more detail. All that I have is all I posted initially.

I'll keep checking.