Several times a week, on average, I get an email from someone I don't know asking a favor. Most commonly, a person wants me to read something she has written: an essay or article, a story, even an entire book. Sometimes the writer wants me to visit his blog and make comments there. I am pretty regularly asked to blurb about-to-be-published books or in some other way to promote them (it's often suggested that I assign them to my classes).
High-school students write to solicit my opinion about this or that — well, usually it's not "this or that," it's C. S. Lewis. People want reading recommendations on a range of subjects. I am very often asked, especially by my fellow Christians, about graduate school in English or the humanities more generally — so often that I wrote up a page of thoughts on that subject.
Sometimes people ask me about Anglicanism, or present me with general theological conundrums. (These I feel absolutely unqualified to address.)
Folks, I just can't keep up with all these requests. I have classes to teach, I have writing commitments, I have work to do at my church, I have a family to care for — and often I get the same kinds of questions from people I know, usually former students, people to whom I think I have some legitimate obligations. There simply are not enough hours in the day for me to answer all these questions.
I have tried for years to keep up, in part because I know that C. S. Lewis, that admirable fellow — who even in the days before email got ten times the requests I get — answered all his mail, even when it took him hours a day to do it. But I have to to wonder how he ever managed to get through all his correspondence, even with a brother willing to serve as secretary. And I even wonder whether he was wise to devote as much time to answering letters as he did.
But in any event, I just know that I'm not able to keep up. I have too often promised to read something that I ended up not being able to find the time to read, or I have read and commented on strangers' work only to let something essential fall into the cracks as a result. So the only conclusion I can come to is this: if I don't know you, I'm not going to be able to read your manuscript or answer your questions. I'm sorry that I can't, but I can't. It's all too much. I hope you will understand.
And one more thing. In the past, when I have responded to requests to read and comment on something or to give advice on one topic or another, I have only rarely received a "thank you" for my pains. In fact, I would say that, over the years, only about one in ten of the people whose requests I have responded to has offered any thanks. Apparently there is some precedent for this, but still, it's not good. If you are one of those people who wants advice from me or from anyone else, and you'd like to contribute to a world in which people regularly offer help to one another, try saying thanks. It won't hurt you, and it'll grease the wheels of the social trolley.
I can't resist adding that Edmund Wilson's version of the above is wittier and more pointed — and also stricter! — than mine:
