Curiosity can lead a person down many roads—for Mel Yoken, who attended Middlebury’s French language school in the summers of 1959 and 1963, it has led to a lifetime of writing letters full of questions. Questions like, who was the greatest influence in your career? How did you come to write your book? What do you read for pleasure? Yoken sought answers, but he wasn’t seeking them from family and friends. His letters were written to some of the most prominent and influential celebrities, political leaders, and authors of the 20th and 21st centuries. He sent off missives to the likes of Ray Bradbury, Lucille Ball, Art Buchwald, Colin Powell, John Glenn, Agatha Christie, and Indira Gandhi. And you know what? They wrote back.
“I have always been curious and was born that way,” Yoken states. “At least, so said my parents. I was congenitally incapable of being otherwise!” An inquisitive mind led to his first letter to an established author. He was working on a master’s degree in teaching at Brown University in the 1960s and striving to deepen his knowledge of French literature. “Whenever we studied a novel, a poem, or a play, I wanted to get to the main source. I vividly recall reading a satire by Jules Romains. I wrote to Romains, asking a few questions about the work, and he wrote back responding to my queries.” Emboldened, Yoken wrote again and thus began a correspondence that lasted until the author’s death in 1972.
It was just the beginning. Yoken had a lot of questions on his mind, and with a natural inclination for correspondence, he put them in writing and posted them off to specific recipients he hoped would answer them. He continued to probe the brains of authors, interested in their writing process. John Clellon Holmes, author of what is considered the first Beat novel, wrote, “I am trying to finish two books, and I’m feeling like a man who, while riding a mare, plans to break a stallion—perhaps tomorrow.” Martha Gellhorn, war correspondent and third wife of Ernest Hemingway, wrote, “For two years I’ve been suffering from writer’s block, which is exactly like being lost or stationary in an endless tunnel without light. Everything I started died. Now this last week for the first time I am cross-stitching away at a story, trembling slightly on my unsteady pins, which I believe I can finish.”
Yoken branched out to contact famous people from all walks of life. One of his prized letters came from Ronald Reagan, whom he wrote to in 1968 when Reagan was governor of California. “He was an actor and well-known politician,” Yoken says. “I had questions that I felt were important to ask and I wrote him. He responded with a detailed, two-page letter.” Reagan described influences in his life, such as Winston Churchill, whom he’s sorry he never met; he talked about the help and encouragement he got from fellow actors when starting his acting career; and he became philosophical about problems facing the nation, like welfare programs. He wrote, “Somehow, this gigantic hodgepodge of overlapping programs has led to a purely materialistic philosophy of thinking that by filling a person’s belly with bacon and beans, we have solved his problem forever…. Welfare, like a doctor, should be operating on the basis of healing the patient, so the patient no longer needs his services.”
Some of the luminaries who wrote to Yoken became friends, and he met them in person. “Over the years, I have reached out to authors to invite them to colloquies, seminars, programs, and events, which I attend. I was the director of the Boivin Center of French Language and Culture at UMass Dartmouth, and I invited chef Julia Child as one of our guests to take part in our lecture series. She consented to speak.” Yoken had been corresponding with her for several years and was delighted to finally meet her. On another occasion, he was in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and drove by the home of Norman Rockwell, Saturday Evening Post illustrator, because he admired his work. Rockwell happened to be in the driveway. “I got out of the car, and we began a conversation,” says Yoken. “A few weeks later, I wrote him, and we began a correspondence.”
Not surprisingly, Yoken speaks at length about the importance of the written word, and the longevity letters can have. With the development over the years of quick communication, via an email or a text, letter writing has become a lost art. Yoken writes, “Letters are truly literary monuments, which show deep, penetrating feelings, emotions, and character. They delineate how people have felt, lived, and acted; they celebrate friendships, love affairs, admirations, and heartbreaks.” He adds, “And what about history? Most of our knowledge of people and events is based on epistolary communication. Think of Harry Truman’s letters to Bess, Henry VIII’s to Anne Boleyn, Napoleon’s to Josephine, John Keats’s to Fanny Brawne, Madame de Sévigné’s letters to her daughter, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s to his.”
Yoken has done his best to add to that history. With over five decades of personal correspondence saved, he houses them in more than 4,000 binders full of some 300,000 sheets in the John Hay Library at Brown University for use by students, scholars, and authors. Researchers can read a letter from Richard Nixon, written even as he was facing the fallout from Watergate, in which he avers that faith in the country is strong and “…people of the Nation—who have contributed so much to the progress of mankind—will help this Administration to achieve the great goals we seek for America and for the world…” A student of the history of music can delight in words written by jazz great Louis Armstrong on the back of a diet chart that reads “Lose Weight, The Satchmo Way!” in which Armstrong says “Joe King Oliver, cornet player in the good old New Orleans days, and a few others influenced me the most…” Television buffs can enjoy comedian Carol Burnett’s description of how she created her “dancing nun” routine. The idea was based on an experience Burnett had while a patient in a Catholic hospital. One of the Sisters on the staff came to her room and told Burnett how much she had enjoyed her performances over the years. She then revealed she was a tap dancer herself and had been in show business. “With that, the Sister gracefully lifted her skirts and proceeded to dance for me. The entire scene was so amusing, and the Sister was perfectly delightful. She had a marvelous sense of humor…”
But you don’t need to go to the John Hay Library to appreciate Yoken’s correspondence. In 2022, he published A History of Letters: Memorable Quotes from a Moribund Art, with excerpts from 140 of his favorite letters. The author of eight other books, he says, “This book, my ninth, was a labor of love that I commenced years ago, and it’s possibly my swan song, although I do have enough material to publish a second and third volume.” And Yoken has done just that: in 2023 he brought out Volume II of A History of Letters, and he is now working on Volume III.
Yoken himself has an impressive résumé. As well as being an author, he was a longtime professor at UMass Dartmouth and holds the title of Chancellor Professor Emeritus of French Language and Literature from the university. In 2018 he was awarded the French Legion of Honor medal and so also has the title of Officier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques. He no doubt has plenty of wisdom and knowledge to impart to anyone curious enough to ask.
You could write him a letter.
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