Letter to and from an Unknown Author

A poly pocket, with only this title carefully written across a white sticky note in the top right corner,  was found to contain a short story recounting the moments leading up to the author -in the story aged 12- discovering that his young sister had been hit by a lorry. The author describes the scene with shocking honesty; the murmuring crowd of neighbours, his mother comforting her injured child, his father vomiting behind a garden wall as he takes the author and his brother home, and the life altering injuries his sister had sustained. Along with the story is a letter, written to the author offering advice on the story structure and quality, as well as words of encouragement. This letter is signed simply ‘R’ and is dated to 1987.

Firstly, literally everything about this piece in our collection raises questions!

How did we obtain this piece? Why is it in our collection?

Why were the story and letter kept, so obviously intended to be sorted and filed away safely, and how did it end up in a box of loose photos?

Why do we have both the story and the letter?

Who was the author? Who was ‘R’? Why would you sign off a letter with just a letter; are you a Bond villain?

Well, as for the Why and the How; the work was found in a filing-box which contained other material relating to Artists’ Agency placements and residencies, which took place throughout the 1980’s. This means that it is possible that this piece was produced as part of one of these residencies, and perhaps retained by the organisation or donated by the original author.

It may have at one point been sorted neatly with other material from the project, to be taken out and used, put down, shuffled between places, put back in the wrong folder, and gathered up with sort-of related materials to end up in a filing-box. This is part of the nature of archiving; when you’re busy working, or organising an exhibition, or preparing to move offices, sometimes things end up in odd places; shoved into random boxes wherever they’ll fit, because it’s better to make sure you still have this precious and important thing regardless of the crunch of deadlines or upheaval; at least it’s somewhere. Then, over thirty years later that thing is found again, a bit crushed and missing its context, but still precious and important.

As to the Who, it might be possible to narrow down who ‘R’ may have been, the artist’s placements might be a solid lead into that investigation. However, it still isn’t a guarantee that we can determine who ‘R’ was with certainty. As to the author, we may never know who wrote this story. The story has no character names, no discernible places of note, and isn’t introduced or signed off in any way. On top of this, if the story was produced as part of an artist’s placement or residency then there is a possibility that the author was what we would now consider a vulnerable person.

Artists’ Agency was an early proponent of social prescribing with a huge number of their placements designed to allow people in care, in prisons or with complex medical and social needs to work directly with artists in meaningful ways.

Due to this, as well as the amount of time that has since passed, personal details of participants may have been disposed of, lost, or simply never gathered. From the tone of ‘R’s letter we can assume that even they may not have known who the Unknown Author actually was.

That all being said, there is a chance that the Unknown Author and ‘R’ are in fact the same person (shocked gasp!). Maybe the entire thing was a writing exercise, a self critique, or demonstration of the difficulties of the writing/editing process. Perhaps unlikely, but fun to think about.

Nevertheless, through the auditing process we might be able to unite these pieces of paper with their all important context and answer some of these questions, but as it stands Letters To and From an Unknown Author remains an endearing and enigmatic piece of Helix Arts’ history.

Hello!

Firstly, I just want to say I loved it. I loved everything about it, and especially loved the “fantasy parts” which ‘R’ seemed to have some kind of personal slight against. I thought that they were effective levity against the very sombre core of the story and made the narratives peak even more devastating. Mostly I loved the point they were there to make, or at least my interpretation of the point; that popular media so effectively exploits tragedy that we often become numb to it. Our main character, a young teenager, is so desensitised to the idea of violence that when they hear that there’s been a car accident their first response is “Lets go down we might see some blood”. It’s only when they see they’re own family suffering the effects of real tragedy, the aspects of human tragedy never shown in horror or action films, do they realise their own role as a willing consumer of tragedy for entertainment. The story centred on a moment of self realisation that I find quite rare in the world around me, let alone in literature more specifically, and although it was a simple realisation for the young character it was honest and its importance conveyed to the reader effectively.

Secondly, I thought the point of the story and the use of scenes from violent horror and action films was particularly interesting for a story written in 1987 following the ‘Video Nasty’ moral panic in Britain. This is something about which I won’t go into detail here as I could probably write a book on the subject, (not a good book per se, but as I said before, writing is difficult). Although I personally have a love for things spooky and macabre, I thought that your story worked well as piece of commentary on how media can warp our understanding of tragedy, and how violence (especially against women and girls, as you make a subtle nod to) has historically been exploited and glorified for the entertainment of predominantly male audiences. I also thought that your story was hopeful, that yes media affects the way young people especially interpret the world around them, but when thrown in the middle of a tragic, gory and complex series of events, they are mentally and emotionally able to grow and come to nuanced conclusions. Though maybe I’m reading into your story entirely too much.

Lastly, I hope you kept writing and that nothing got in your way. I hope you went from strength to strength and that I unwittingly enjoy the work you went on to create already. Finding your story in a filling-box absolutely made my day.

Sincerely,

L
(I still think this is a strange way to sign off a letter but I can’t deny it does feel a little bit stylish.)