Patrick Smith’s Mailbag

As we give the second millennium a big fat kiss goodbye, Time’s Letters Department is happy to report on the robust health of the written word as a form of personal communication, despite dire warnings a decade ago of its imminent demise. For evidence, we point to the 1,300 letters a week, on average, that we continue to receive from our loyal readers, three-quarters of whom now post their insights, bitter complaints, bad puns, outrageous theories and effusive compliments by the miracle of e-mail.

Holiday Treats

Within the storm of strong opinion and hapless befuddlement blowing through the hundreds of letters we read, there are occasional lightning flashes of epistolary grandeur, many of which make it into the Letters column. Here, a few that didn’t:

MOST OPERATIC COMPLIMENT “My eyes danced across the pages of your ravishingly splendid story and nearly teared in anticipation of each new twist of phrase. What drama!”

UNKINDEST CUT “Dear Pagans: I know you’re the scum of the earth, but still I expected better.”

STRANGEST STORY SUGGESTION “Would you publish my philosophical essay on morality and cheese?”

MOST PERSISTENT COMPLAINT “This is my 1,597th letter to the editor–and you’ve published not a single one!”

SADDEST TALE “I’m a former subscriber who now finds himself broke and in prison.”

MOST BAFFLING REQUEST “Please send me A.S.A.P. the story from a while back about the thing you can download to track alien waves from space.”

LETTERS Q & A:

“Please, could you tell me which female has appeared on the cover more times than any other?”

The first to appear twice was Mrs. Herbert (“Lou”) Hoover, and Queen Mary of England was the first to be pictured three times, but PRINCESS DIANA tops the list of women on TIME’s cover, having turned up within the red border a grand total of nine times. Runner-up is a tie, with eight covers apiece for both the VIRGIN MARY and HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (we aren’t counting the tiny insert pics of Hillary on two Zippergate covers). But the race is not over. As Campaign 2000 bears down upon us, we would have to say it’s a reasonably good bet that the anticipated Democratic candidate for New York’s U.S. Senate seat will go at least one up on the Virgin Mother and, if Hillary wins, may take the top spot away from Di. If that makes you queasy, rest easy. It’s nothing a religion cover or two won’t cure.

THE BOX SCORE

Here are the cover stories that got the most and the least mail in each of the past five years:

THE MOST 1994 Accused Murderer O.J. Simpson (6/27) 1,396 1995 O.J. Verdict (10/16) 1,907 1996 Newt Gingrich, Man of the Year (12/25-1/1) 2,283 1997 Ellen DeGeneres (4/14) 2,085 1998 The Starr Report (9/21) 3,640

THE LEAST 1994 Nuclear Terror for Sale (8/29) 68 1995 Michael Crichton (9/25) 48 1996 Fidelity Investments (9/30) 20 1997 Mir: Crisis in Space (11/3) 12 1998 Tom Wolfe (11/2) 31