Spotting this volume on a bookstore shelf, I grabbed it and headed straight to the cash register. I began devouring it on the way home, and relinquished it on the final page only with a sigh of regret...
Mallon's companion volume to this fascinating review of the art of letter-writing is an equally-compelling look at diarists and their prose,
A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries. I bought that in hardcover -- one of the earliest non-fiction books I purchased in hardcover, back in the days when I first started working and could afford to buy my own books rather than simply borrow them from the library -- and has never moved from its spot on the "easily accessible because I will want to pull it down and consult it a lot" shelf in the 25 years or so that have elapsed. Now this book, an insight into how a host of very different personalities (imagine Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng and Romantic poet John Keats cohabiting, alongside the correspondence between Gustave Flaubert and George Sand, and that between Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy!) will join it there, because the greatest pleasure of a book of this kind is really only revealed over the years, as I dip into it for a some perspective (Noel Coward's letter to Marlene Dietrich to stop mooning over Yul Brynner, who "only really says tender things to you when he's drunk"), inspiration (the intellectual clarity of Wei Jingsheng in the face of his imprisonment and torture) and insight into some part of the human condition.
One of the joys of this collection is that while the usual suspects are here (from Abelard and Heloise and the Pastons to Winston Churchill, via Dickens, Faulkner, etc. etc.), there are many less familiar names as well as unknowns, such the epistolary courtship between a deaf seamstress in Liverpool and her American suitor. There are letters from those in the besieged Sarajevo, from fans of celebrities, from those about to kill themselves. All are assembled under thematic headings, each of which explores one of several contexts in which letters can be written. There are, of course, love letters; there are letters of advice and complaint; letters that are confessions, acts of friendship or just an effort to keep in touch.
The collection, which probably required an incredible amount of effort and thought to compile and organize (just imagine what was left on the cutting room floor!), covers the emotional gamut from great wit to immense poignancy, sometimes while Mallon is dealing with the letters from a single individual (think Oscar Wilde...) And yet, sometimes it's Mallon's own commentary that is just as striking. Writing about the wonderful World War I poet Wilfred Owen, Mallon notes that one "must proceed through the correspondence with a terrible foreknowledge" that Owen will be killed in action in the final weeks of the conflict. On Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, he writes that "not the least sexy thing about these lovers is that they never ran away with each other."
In the two decades or so that Mallon (who went from non-fiction literary books of this kind, and an equally intriguing one about the 'art' of plagiarism, to writing fiction) spent thinking about this book, the kinds of letters that we write have changed beyond recognition. In my 20s, I was still eagerly awaiting letters from friends living in different countries or continents (I still treasure a series from a friend who was in Eastern Europe at the time of the 1989 revolutions; in one I wrote to him I mentioned wryly that now that he planned to go to Romania, the revolution would certainly follow him; by the time he received it, Caecescu's regime had fallen and he commented equally wryly on the fact.) This collection will make those of us who recalls snail mail as the only option ponder about what has been lost in the ability to communicate rapidly and constantly. Now that it has become so easy to write 'letters', have we actually enhanced our ability to connect with our correspondents? Questions like this ripple just beneath the surface of Mallon's book and yet only occasionally poke their heads above the surface. Indeed, my only quibble with the book is that I would have found this book more intriguing and timely had Mallon opted to set his literary selections against the backdrop of this kind of question, and allow his own voice to be heard more frequently on these questions. Certainly, he's earned the right to put his own thoughts side by side with many of the people whose letters he quotes.
This is a delightful grab-bag of a book, one that I'd suggest dipping into over time rather than trying to read cover-to-cover in a single sitting. Everyone will emerge with their own favorites, I imagine, and some thoughts about writers who don't belong or who are given short shrift. Still, it's a fascinating compendium to publish at a time when the whole concept of communicating via the letter is in the midst of dramatic change.
Although only about half the letters in the book are those of 'literary' figures (Faulkner, Chekhov, Dickens, et. al.), this collection will probably appeal most strongly to readers who are, themselves, of a literary bent -- after all, the point of a letter is to capture events in a way that makes their recipients feel as if they were at the writer's side. But I'd recommend this to anyone with a wide-ranging curiosity; it's a perfectly-timed book for the holidays. (I've already earmarked it for several friends as a gift.) Highly recommended.
