Customer Reviews

Yours Ever: People and Their Letters

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In YOURS EVER, Thomas Mallon resumes his odd yet engaging habit of puttering about on the fringes of the literary life and, in the process, churning out a good many fascinating tidbits. In previous works, he explored diary writing and plagiarism. Here, he gives his readers a quick tour of letter writers past and present, young and old, famous and obscure, longwinded and epigrammatic. Every reader will have his own list of favorites cited --- and also a list of sorely-missed absentees.

The book is not chronological --- in fact, one of its somewhat annoying features is the need for the reader to leapfrog back and forth through history. We go without a break from Sacco and Vanzetti to Sir Walter Raleigh, from Richard Nixon to Florence Nightingale, and from Harold Ross to Abelard. The time-travelling reader gets a bit jet-lagged, though the trip itself is often engrossing. This is due to the way Mallon has chosen to organize his book. YOURS EVER is structured around nine broad motifs of absence, friendship, advice, complaint, love, spirit, confession, war and prison. I lost count of how many letter writers he covers, but they surely would populate a small town. His book is enjoyable reading, but as its parade of writers passes by, it begins to seem like the literary equivalent of speed dating.

Some of these writers are treated more fully than others. Charles Dickens, one of the great literary letter writers, gets only a couple of pages while the rather boring and persnickety correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Alfred Jung goes on a great length. My personal list of people who deserve severe trimming, if not outright exclusion, would include Rainer Maria Rilke, John Keats and Bruno Schulz --- writers who certainly deserved their fame but whose self-absorbed letters do not always make good reading. My list of I-wish-they-were-there candidates is headed by two names: Abigail Adams and Arnold Schoenberg. Adams's letters are famous enough to need no recommendation; Schoenberg's are probably the most self-revelatory of any famous composer's --- cranky, arrogant, and full of the writer's certainty of his own importance. But they are also a window into the mind of a prickly genius uprooted from his native soil by the Nazi menace and plunked down into an American culture that often revolted him.

Among the most felicitous of Mallon's choices are the letters of Lord Byron and the doomed British wartime poet Wilfred Owen. There are also a couple of exchanges between gay couples and a fascinating look at letters from a German army officer who was revolted by what his leaders were making him do during World War II.

Mallon surmises that letter-writing has not died, but merely entered the "post-private age" by morphing into e-mail and even more exotic forms. But he finds the old-fashioned pen-and-paper variety more fitted for revealing the true character of the sender. Regardless, each reader will certainly make up a bouquet of favorite quotes from these letters (and also from Mallon's often witty commentary). Here are a few of my favorites:

Lord Byron on his rather unfortunate marriage: "I got a wife and a cold on the same day, but have got rid of the last pretty speedily."

Mark Twain's deft putdown of Sir Walter Scott: "Did he know how to write English and didn't do it because he didn't want to?"

And perhaps the most cutting of all is Ayn Rand's warning to a niece who had asked her for a loan of $25 to buy a dress: "I want you to know right now that I will not accept any excuse --- except serious illness...If, when the debt becomes due, you tell me that you can't pay me because you needed a new pair of shoes or a new coat...then I will consider you as an embezzler...I won't send the police after you, but I will write you off as a rotten person and will never speak or write to you again."

Rand ended with the hope that "this will be the beginning of a real friendship between us." Mallon records that the niece took the deal. The reader can only hope that she got herself a becoming dress with that cash.

--- Reviewed by Robert Finn

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.

I purchased YOURS EVER because I love writing letters . . . long letters. I hadn't read any of Mallon's previous books, so didn't know quite what to expect, but I thought it would have full-length letters plus commentary by Mallon. I was wrong. It's all commentary with brief quotations. At first that was a disappointment, but as I read along, I thought maybe it was a good approach. There are, of course, some letter writers I'm not interested in. But I loved Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, H.L. Mencken, Philip Larkin, and a number of others. Enough to like the book.

Yours Ever was not the book I expected it to be. I thought it would be a collection of letters from a variety of people and characters throughout history along with brief asides, historical commentary, and the like by Thomas Mallon. Instead Yours Ever is organized in thematic chapters on nine broad topics like Friendship, Advice, and War. Also, it does not include full reprints of letters, but instead utilizes block quotes interspersed with historical information and commentary about the function of letters in that particular period or setting.

While it was not what I expected it to be at all, it is still a lovely read. The thematic organiztion works well as Mallon is able to combine a variety of historical people and settings within one chapter, and it is marvelous to see the similarities and differences between two nineteenth century African-American women writing to one another and two wealthy American and European women writing to each other in the twentieth century.

Yours Ever is lengthy and full of details without being long-winded. I found myself rereading certain quotes and passages from letters that were especially memorable. Mallon's historical details are also spot on. They provide enough context to gain a greater understanding of the letters and their writers without being distracting from the subject of letter writing.

While I very much enjoyed reading this book I'm glad I borrowed it from the library instead of purchasing it; I'm not sure that it has a high reread value. However, if I were still enrolled in grad school the reread and research potential would be greatly increased and it would then be a book worth purchasing.

Also, the extensive bibliography is great if you are looking for further reading on this subject.

Thomas Mallon's previous book about people and their diaries ("A Book of One's Own") was extraordinary - it set the standard by which any other books on the topic should be judged. It didn't seem possible for his subsequent book on plagiarism ("Stolen Words") to reach the same level of excellence, but it did.

It's perhaps not altogether surprising that this latest book didn't match the brilliance of the earlier two (if nothing else, the statistical phenomenon of regression toward the mean would be expected to take effect at some point). It's not that this is a bad book - it's just not particularly interesting. Mallon appears to have dragged out the writing over a period of 15 years, which conveys the definite impression that he just lost interest. It's unclear why he would think the reader's reaction would be any different. In fact, the lukewarm nature of his introduction (to *his own* book ) suggests that he knows that the book fails to reach his earlier standards.

The book's content is roughly one third direct quotation from various letters, flanked by Mallon's introduction and commentary. The 300 or so pages of text are divided into nine thematic groupings: Absence, Friendship, Advice, Complaint, Love, Spirit, Confession, War, and Prison.

In general, the book would have benefitted had Mallon opted for more extensive quotation from fewer correspondents. Many of the people from whose letters he quotes are just not all that interesting, and his bridging text does not make it adequately clear why they have been chosen for inclusion. The inevitable result is that the reader is left wishing that the witless had been sacrificed to make room for more material from those with genuine wit and insight.

I find it hard to summon up more than three stars. An infinitely better book is the collection edited by Andrew Carroll,Letters of a Nation. Carroll's book is better for three reasons - he prints complete letters, not just snippets; he confines his own commentary to a very smart 8-page introduction; and the letters that he includes are all simply terrific. Each packs an emotional punch, and the reader is never left to wonder why it was included. Unfortunately the answer to that question is rarely evident in Mallon's over-inclusive, meandering collection.

For every book that regularly gets 4-5 stars on Amazon, there is some humbug ready to give it 1-2. Today, I am that humbug.

Not having read Mallon's previous works, such as his diarist compendium, I was not prepared for what this one was likely to be. From reviews and blurbs, I assumed this was a book about letter writing--one that would define what makes a great letter writer, give examples of great letters, etc. I assumed incorrectly. Instead, this is a book about the lives of people who engaged in correspondence. Perhaps 30 or more epistolary relationships are presented with an essentially biographical thrust. Short excerpts of letters are presented, but used more to highlight the lives of the letter writers than to explicate theories or appreciation of letter writing. Not a single letter is reproduced in full, so it is never possible even to divine for oneself how a letter-writer goes about constructing a good letter.

How were the profiled letter-writers chosen? Apparently at random. The author comments on the fact that readers will be disappointed to have their favorites excluded, but no theme is presented to tie the book together. As far as I can tell, the author selected famous people from across the political spectrum. So we have Churchill and Wilson together, and of course all the spectrum of race, sexual orientation, and religious affiliation. Most disappointing, the profiles do not seem to be based on the reputation of letter writing so much as general historical fame. So, for example, I see no rationale for including the Churchill letters. Yes, he received a Nobel Prize in literature, but not for his correspondence with his wife, which is what's presented. Likewise, with Wilson, do I care that the Whitehouse staff thought he was neglecting his duties to write love notes? Does this give me insight into letters as a literary form?

I've always had an interest in letter writing. But I've never pursued the interest, and this book was to be my first foray into the subject. I don't feel it was worth my time, although it did spark further interest in select works, such as...
Selected Letters (Penguin Classics) of Madame de Sevigne;
The Pure and the Impure (New York Review Books Classics) by Collette;
The Japanese letters of Lafcadio Hearn;
Notes from the Underground: The Whittaker Chambers/Ralph de Toledano Letters, 1949-1960

Plus two stars for Mallon's felicity with English, but that's all I can give this disappointing purchase.

I found this to be a mildly interesting book. There are some splendid segments, but a lot that aren't. I'm something of a history buff, but I think it would take someone far more buffed than I to really enjoy this book.