ABOUT THIS ITEM

After years of writing songs and singing them into the space in front of him, Bill Callahan has now written a book of words to go out into that space too.
‘Letters To Emma Bowlcut’ is just that, the letters from a boy to a girl. It is in fact one side of the story, and as such is a meditation on solitude, at times tracing a relationship but mainly making the expressions of a person’s soul secrets that are too difficult to impart face to face. As the first letter says, “I couldn’t talk to you but I had to write to you” .
A fiction with a nameless protagonist, this book collects 62 letters from a few seasons as he reaches repeatedly outwards, addressing himself to Emma whether countering her unseen words or, more often, exploring the possibilities of explaining his self. To entertain, to explain, to seduce or induce a reply, all his intentions are bound together in the letters, which come across alternately as diary entries, talltale confessionals and yes, letters. Our writer is up to the task, sifting the loose details of his day-to-day, giving emotional weather updates, advising, narrating and delivering dry punchlines with incredible timing.
·‘Letters To Emma Bowlcut’ captures the sensual and esoteric qualities of letter correspondence that cannot be duplicated by any fancy digital technologies — your emails, texts, and the IM. There is something in the time it takes the post to deliver, and the object that eventually arrives that evokes an intimacy, a passion, a desire to be known and an opportunity to present oneself in the internal fantasy of everyday’s secret internal dialogue.