I've had this book for ages, but never got around to reading it, but I'm finally glad I did. This is an eclectic collection for 125 letters from a wide variety of correspondents. The majority of the writers or recipients of the letters you will have heard of, but it is always fun to read some of their private thoughts that make their way into letters. This is a well-curated collection and makes me nostalgic for the days of long form communication.
What a treasure this book is—and how sad that future generations won’t have more letters like these with which to better understand those who came before them. What struck me most of all was how difficult it has always been to be a person. Some of these letters were pure human mess, and there was strange comfort in knowing that others have struggled through things I’m feeling now (or have felt before). This book is truly a good mine for the human experience, and I loved it.
Honestly, this book (and the blog it comes from) is simply breathtaking. Reading letters is something I've come to appreciate more the older I get, and this collection is a beautifully diverse curation of the humorous, the weird, the loving, and the heartbreaking (sometimes all in one letter). As noted in the book's introduction, the dates of these letters spans from the 14th century BC up until the 21st century (albeit with quite a bit of skew toward the 19th and 20th centuries). I think one of my favorite things about this book was how universal certain themes are. I mean, here are writings than span literally more than a millennium, and yet there's still so many commonalities between so many seemingly dissimilar people.
For me, this wasn't the kind of book I could devour in one sitting - it was difficult to read more than a few letters at a time and not feel the weight of it. Like traveling in a time machine, or trying on another person's life for the briefest moment! In a way, it's exhausting - but also thrilling, and something I wanted to savor. In all honesty, by the time I've now finished (two months after starting it, whoops), I've forgotten many of the letters that early on left me thinking, "Oh, I have to remember to mention THIS one in my review!" I'm actually kind of pleased about that, because I can look forward to being surprised by them again next time I read through this.
This was a very interesting book. I've never read a collection of letters before, so I was quite curious when I started reading it. Because it is composed of various letters from completly different times and people and backgrounds. And so it was only natural that the content is so diverse, too. And I really liked it. Especially with the contrast of very old and new letters, it felt like traveling back in time. Of course there were some letters I didn't like that much or that weren't that exciting to me, but that's completely okay. And on the opposite, there were some letters that really, really touched me and I reread them again and again. And again. I think my favourite one has to be the one from Henry James to Grace Norton. It's sobrilliant. I also felt like I learnt quite a lot. For example I didn't know Mahatma Ghandi wrote a letter to Adolf Hitler (it never reached him); or how bad the handwriting of most famous people is. Because the photos of the originals printed next to the translation were often horrible. But it was also so fun to see the originals, it made it so much more authentic to me. All in all a really sweet, sad, happy, insightful, reflective, informative and hilarious book. And so many more emotions I can't describe. I loved it.
A beautiful of collection of every manner of correspondence, famouse people, widows, lovers, fathers. My personal favorite, a brief missive written on birch bark and dating from 1350.
Letters of Note is a collection of over a hundred correspondences across time. There isn't a unique theme to these letters and their arrangement is quite random.
"The highlights are endless, but let me pluck a handful from the bag to whet your appetite. We have a letter from Mick Jagger to Andy Warhol that contains a wonderfully laid-back design brief for a Rolling Stones album cover; a handwritten note from Queen Elizabeth II to US President Eisenhower which is accompanied by Ma’am’s personal scone recipe; a remarkable and masterful riposte from a freed slave to his old master that will leave many of you punching the air; Virginia Woolf’s heart-rending final letter to her husband, written shortly before taking her own life; a beautiful, delicate letter of advice from Iggy Pop to a troubled young fan that could warm the coldest of hearts; a truly incredible letter penned by scientist Francis Crick to his son, in which he announces the discovery of the structure of DNA; a harrowing account of a mastectomy performed without anaesthetic, written by the 60-year old patient to her daughter; and an extraordinary job application letter from one of history’s most celebrated minds, Leonardo da Vinci. On your travels you will read love letters, rejection letters, fan letters, apology letters; you will be saddened, maddened, delighted and shocked. One of the letters, imprinted into a clay tablet, dates all the way back to the 14th century BC; the most recent is just a few years old. However, despite their many flavours, I am hopeful that all will captivate you as they have me and whisk you to a point in time far more effectively than the average history book – indeed, I can think of no better way to learn about the past than through the often candid correspondence of those who lived it."
-Shaun Usher in the foreword
The book's aesthetic is enhanced with scanned copies of the originals of the letters. The stories are quite remarkable, but I felt they are too random to be read in one sitting. The collection seemed to me to be something one would like to leaf through at will to read at leisure. It also might make a good addition to the coffee-table for others. Here are a few samples. "In March 1973, acclaimed author E.B. White wrote the following perfectly formed reply to a Mr Nadeau, who sought White’s opinion on what he saw as a bleak future for the human race. "
"In 1934, a New York copywriter by the name of Robert Pirosh quit his well-paid job and headed for Hollywood, determined to begin the career of his dreams as a screenwriter. When he arrived, he gathered the names and addresses of as many directors, producers and studio executives as he could find and sent them what is surely one of the greatest, most effective cover letters ever to be written; a letter which secured him three interviews, one of which led to his job as a junior writer at MGM.
Fifteen years later, screenwriter Robert Pirosh won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his work on the war film, Battleground. A few months after that, he also won a Golden Globe."
A heartwarming reply from Roald Dahl to seven-year-old Amy, who had sent him one of her dreams, contained in a bottle, along with a letter. The dream is an allusion to the BFG, one of Amy's favorite Dahl books, wonderful, magical story of a Big Friendly Giant who collects nice dreams and then blows them through the windows of sleeping children.
I laughed (Dorothy Parker bored in the hospital, Eudora Welty asking for a job). I cried (Louis Armstrong responding to a soldier's fan letter). I learned more about things I thought I knew (Vonnegut's letter to his parents about Dresden, William Safire's presidential speech in case Armstrong and Aldrin were left stranded on the moon). I was deeply deeply puzzled (why the hell did Amelia Earhart get married if that was how she felt?).
But holy Moses, I am intensely grateful to this book for exposing me to two letters written by Jourdon Anderson and Jermain Loguen, former slaves who were each importuned by their former owners to come back to the farm. More elegant, eloquent, precise, and logically sound expressions of "go fuck yourself" I have never read.
