I was hoping for an on-the-ground look at America's pre-Civil War intelligentsia, and... sort of got it. Certainly a dispatch from a different world. (It is amusing to imagine the author trying the same shtick in the lobby of a modern-day Four Seasons.) Quite a few interesting ideas, though I only wound up saving one quote for my commonplace book. The poems weren't especially good.

I finished a third of this, which was about the right amount. Not enough interest per page to get further.