In this age of space exploration, a computer in every home, and triumphs of reason, Americans are still threatened and thrilled by an object of superstition and fear--the chain letter. Chain letters seem alien to the twentieth century because they express and elicit primitive emotions and ideas--fear and avarice, good and bad luck. They involve mystic powers, talismen, magic numbers and phrases, and communications with power and power systems well outside the control or understanding of technology. But chain letters are here today with much the same strength that they have enjoyed for nearly a century--and with very much the same force.
Chain letters have not faded in the glaring light of modern technology, but have fastened onto it like a parasitic life-form. They have even taken on new vitality. Fifty years ago, letter chains suffered from the tedious requirement of retyping or rewriting the letters anywhere between five and twenty times. Xerography has made copying a minor consideration in the tradition of chain letters. Moreover, while technology may have changed over the past century, the psychological and sociologic underpinnings of the genre remain unchanged.
Chain letters promise everything from simple, unspecified good fortune to tens of thousands of dollars, complete with full and convincing testimony of past successes (and failures) in abundance, including threats against those who might "break the chain," inadvertently or purposefully. To this day I cannot add new chain letters to my bulging file without wincing at the knowledge that I am once again daring the fates by breaking yet another chain.
"While in the Philippines," I read in the last letter I put in the files, "General Welch"--just a coincidence, I mutter to myself--"lost his wife six days after he received the letter; he failed to circulate the prayer. Joe Elliot received $450,000 and lost it because he broke the chain." In other letters, Elliot lost his wife, like Welch, or a fortune. In a few examples, Elliot dies for his cynicism. Threats like that can test the confidence of even the most hardened skeptic!
Chain Letters as Folklore
Chain letters are a phenomenon that challenges the best folklore taxonomists. Traditionally, the definition of folklore has included phrases like "oral transmission" or "word of mouth," and yet here is an exclusively written form, distributed by the relatively sophisticated media of photocopying and the postal system. Yet it displays all of the other characteristics we expect of folklore--long life, anonymity, and variation of detail within a fairly constant larger framework.
The chain letter is also problematic for serious folkloric investigation because of the difficulty of gathering the basic documents. Researchers go into the field and simply ask for log barn locations or tales about great hunters, but it is much harder, if not impossible, to solicit chain letters. A researcher cannot sit back and await the normal lifetime's harvest of chain letters, anywhere between five and fifty letters.
In my own work, I found that there is a metafolklore--folklore about folklore--with chain letters. I have become accustomed to receiving samples of chain letters from helpful readers who have run across my pleas for
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