Yours Ever

Starred review from September 14, 2009
This companion volume to prolific Mallon's 1984 study of diaries, A Book of One's Own
, surveys several epistolary subgenres, including friendship, advice, complaint, love, confession, war-zone dispatch and pleas from prison. A 25-year correspondence between Mary McCarthy and Hannah Arendt pleasurably mixes world politics and personal foibles, musings about the Eichmann trial with an unwanted pregnancy and literary gossip. Henry Miller bullied his patient publisher James Laughlin for 30 years (“Why should I compromise?... to please you?
”); Florence Nightingale's angry, agitated letters from the Crimean War show a respect for the suffering soldier and a contempt for complaining nurses; E.M. Forster confides to a friend his homosexual initiation at age 37 by an Egyptian tram conductor; and Winston and Clementine Churchill's long correspondence blends patriotism, ambition and shared tenacity. They stand in marked contrast to the duke and duchess of Windsor's baby talk and self-pity. This smart, witty and lively account with excerpts of a not-yet-extinct literary genre will whet our appetites for published collections of letters—a selected bibliography is included—while motivating us to put pen to paper to rediscover a satisfying means of communication.

October 15, 2009
Desiring a companion volume to his study of diaries, "A Book of One's Own", Mallon ("Fellow Travelers; Henry and Clara") offers samples of personal correspondence from ancient Persia to email, which he believes will revive the lost art of letter writing. Nevertheless, most excerpts are from traditional handwritten postings. Topics range from absence to love, confession to prison. Each chapter heading contains a blanket term (e.g., "Absence," "Spirit," "War") under which Mallon tucks in the thoughts of many well-known writers, statesmen, and social advocates. Some epistles reveal not-so-noteworthy character traits: William Faulkner's racism, V.S. Naipaul's misogyny, and Neal Cassady's self-destructive path. On the other hand, Lincoln, while altruistic, proves himself primarily pragmatic; Virginia Woolf radiates as a gentle, life-affirming lover; political dissident Wei Jingsheng's mocking pleas help liberate him from Chinese prison; and Oscar Wilde's rant against publishers of personal letters adds an ironic twist. VERDICT An engaging if slightly disjointed expos of the inner musings of some of the world's best thinkers; of interest to readers who favor biography.Nedra Crowe-Evers, Sonoma Cty. Lib., CA

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2009
In an age when one can Tweet ones most trivial thoughts and actions in the instant they occur, the notion of handwritten letterswith real punctuation and everything!seems hopelessly quaint. Just as one can currently subscribe to the Twitter feeds of people one doesnt even know, the allure of reading someone elses correspondence has always been a temptation too strong to resist. Feeding this guilty pleasure, Mallon has drawn on a mixed mailbag of letters from the infamous and insane, powerful and paltry, sophisticated and simple to illustrate not only the lost art of correspondence but also the therapeutic purpose such letter writing (and reading) can serve. Letters of advice and ardor, of confession and exaltation, written during the most perilous wars or from the meanest prison cell, are a revelatory barometer of a societys mind-set. In an eloquent tribute to an endangered form of communication, Mallon adroitly distills each correspondents purpose while placing it in a greater thematic context.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)