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What an incredible book! LETTERS OF NOTE, collected by Shaun Usher, consists of 125 letters-- if I counted correctly-- from many different people and times. The book is big enough and certainly beautiful enough to make that dubious qualification of suitable for a coffee table. Mr. Usher often includes with the letters full-page portraits of the writers, an actual reproduction of the letter, handwritten or typed or in whatever other form of the original letter as the case may be, along with the printed letters and a short paragraph about what occasioned the letter.
This is one of those books that you can open anywhere and read a terrific letter. The first one I read was one from Bette Davis to her daughter responding to what she had written about Davis in her memoir MY MOTHER'S KEEPER. (Fortunately not every letter is the collection contains so much venom although Flannery O`Connor`s may run a close second.) I guess the lady wasn't always acting in her movies. The letter I just finished is a note from Oscar Wilde to Bernulf Clegg explaining his remark that "All art is quite useless." Part of his beautiful letter reads as follows: "A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it." In Queen Elizabeth's letter to President Eisenhower, she encloses her recipe for drop scones that she had promised him. Mary Stuart sends a letter to the brother of her ex-husband hours before she is to be beheaded: " thanks be to God, I scorn death and vow that I meet it innocent of any crime." One wonders how anyone at the NEW YORKER magazine could have not hired the twenty-three-year-old Eudora Welty after reading her charming, funny letter-- but they did. "I am a southerner, from Mississippi, the nation's most backward state. .Read more ›
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Shaun Usher has assembled a collection of letters that delights, and captivates. This is an enjoyable read. Not that every story is happy because many are not. Rather because reading each enriches and bestows appreciation for the moment. This is one book meant to touch and stroke the simile of the page; for me, better in hardback than in kindle. From Groucho Marx's advise to Woody Allen, Roald Dahl's thank you letter for the "dream in the bottle", a 10-year-old Fidel Castro to the President of the United States, Ray Bradbury's letter "I am not afraid of Robots. I am afraid of people, people, people. I want them to remain human.", Kurt Vonnegut to the head of the school board who ordered burning all school copies of Slaughterhouse-Five, and Mick Jager's intelligent letter to Andy Warhol on the design of Rolling Stone's record sleeve which was ignored and became the famously working jean crotch zipper.
And there is the Reagan in polyester hound's tooth jacket, writing to his estranged son, mentioning how he knew more than many what an unhappy home is.
Finally, if for nothing else, the 342 pages of letter and commentaries is worthwhile if only to have a copy of Queen Elizabeth II's handwritten letter to then President Eisenhower when, after seeing a picture of him bar-b-queuing at a party, she includes her recipe for "One Drop Scones".
This is a gift book that is of large format with heavy stock paper. The large format gives a comfortable space with which they did careful, true renderings of the artifacts. The viewing of the originals is not here so important for any scholarly reason, but to warm the reading of each. Chronicle Books is usually good at such things and here it adds just that nice finish.
If you have bathroom enough, this is a prize for the throne sitters.
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I've been reading the Letters of Note website for several years. On it, Shaun Usher has done an astonishing job of finding and presenting letters that regularly make me say WOW. But, although websites and blogs can be good for serendipitous discovery, they're inherently impermanent. You read this now, you go on to the next thing... and if you're distracted, you forget to return. So I'm especially glad to see that Letters of Note has become a book -- and a gorgeous, tactile, hefty one at that, with photos and images that help each letter come alive.
The book is rather a "best of" collection: about 125 letters that can only be called "eclectic." A tiny subset: Queen Elizabeth's scone recipe, which she sent to President Eisenhower; Eudora Welty's letter to The New Yorker in which she asked for a job (gee, I wish _I_ could write a cover letter like that! even though this one didn't work immediately); 20-year-old Hunter Thompson's life advice to a friend (in part -- "Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective"); Roald Dahl responding sweetly to a 7-year-old's fan letter; Annie Oakley offering President McKinley 50 lady sharpshooters for the war effort in 1898.
They're all worth reading -- every one of them. And because they each are so different from one another, turning the page is like exploring another life. A "music is life itself" letter from Louis Armstrong on one page, followed by an 1865 letter from a slave to his old master on the next.Read more ›
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This item: Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience
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