This is not a sports post, Stan and Neal. You may want to turn back now. That goes for everyone else looking for sports at this moment. Got that?

I have a question and I need your help, but first some background.

I am reading Saul Bellow’s letters — a selection. Letters of great writers are interesting. They are not finished books or short stories and they were not written for publication — unless the writer thought they might get published some day, which makes things complicated in a good way. You learn a lot about writers from their letters and Bellow was a great letter writer, funny, sad, deep, brilliant.

My question: People don’t write letters as much as they used to. They send e-mails. I almost never write a letter and I bet most writers no longer write letters. Does this mean books of letters have become a dead genre? I mean, will we in future see books of so-and-so’s e-mails? Hardly the same thing.

Can someone out there help me? Are books of great letters defunct?