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A review by brizreading
Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience by Shaun Usher
5.0
A survey of humanity in the Studs Terkel vein. So, it's Studsian in that you laugh, you cry, you're inspired, and you can't believe the lives people have had. Letters of Note is actually a website, one of those wonderful late-2000s novelty tumblrs that actually tumbled onto a GENIUS IDEA and turned that into a wonderful book (other lesser tumblrs of this genre are Awesome People Hanging Out Together, Everybody Reading Books, Nerd Boyfriend, Brokers With Hands On Their Faces, the women and salads one, the animals talking in all caps one, etc etc. JUST GOOGLE IT YOSELF JEEZ).
Anyway, Letters of Note was one of the more intellectual ones - and one of the ones with truly incredible content. This is all due, I imagine, to the blog owner/editor, Shaun Usher, who's granular passion for both the medium (he has a blog on letterheads as well) and history is the driving force. How does this man find these things?! Where does he dig them up?! They are mostly incredible. They are also often tending to an overrepresentation of 19th century stuff, and mid-20th century, but that is - like - a tiny sliver (maybe 10%) of a star. This is still a five-star experience.
My faves:
- Mary Stuart's letter the night before she was to be executed (a perfect Wolf Hall chaser!)
- Iggy Pop's hopeful letter to a despairing young fan
- A letter from one of the early producers of Monty Python's Life of Brian, freaking out about the script
- One of the Titanic's "Help, we're sinking" telegrams
- A letter from Gandhi to Hitler (!)
- A letter from Hitler's nephew, Patrick Hitler (!), trying to get into the US army
- Two replies from two separate former slaves who both get asked by their former owners to come back to the plantation, please (these replies are wonderfully scathing)
- A form apology letter to be sent when you're embarrassed about getting too drunk at last night's dinner party (from 1,000 years ago in China!)
I think my absolute favorite, maybe, was a rejection letter Gertrude Stein received from a London publisher. It's very, very funny.
All of these, I imagine, you can just google or find on the website. Several of them had gone viral a few years ago; and so I knew them already. But it's still worth getting the book, both as a beautiful artifact and convenience (we can't leave everything to those google servers, ey!), and to support Usher's wonderful labors. Argh, see, now I'm talking like him! LABORS?!
Anyway, Letters of Note was one of the more intellectual ones - and one of the ones with truly incredible content. This is all due, I imagine, to the blog owner/editor, Shaun Usher, who's granular passion for both the medium (he has a blog on letterheads as well) and history is the driving force. How does this man find these things?! Where does he dig them up?! They are mostly incredible. They are also often tending to an overrepresentation of 19th century stuff, and mid-20th century, but that is - like - a tiny sliver (maybe 10%) of a star. This is still a five-star experience.
My faves:
- Mary Stuart's letter the night before she was to be executed (a perfect Wolf Hall chaser!)
- Iggy Pop's hopeful letter to a despairing young fan
- A letter from one of the early producers of Monty Python's Life of Brian, freaking out about the script
- One of the Titanic's "Help, we're sinking" telegrams
- A letter from Gandhi to Hitler (!)
- A letter from Hitler's nephew, Patrick Hitler (!), trying to get into the US army
- Two replies from two separate former slaves who both get asked by their former owners to come back to the plantation, please (these replies are wonderfully scathing)
- A form apology letter to be sent when you're embarrassed about getting too drunk at last night's dinner party (from 1,000 years ago in China!)
I think my absolute favorite, maybe, was a rejection letter Gertrude Stein received from a London publisher. It's very, very funny.
All of these, I imagine, you can just google or find on the website. Several of them had gone viral a few years ago; and so I knew them already. But it's still worth getting the book, both as a beautiful artifact and convenience (we can't leave everything to those google servers, ey!), and to support Usher's wonderful labors. Argh, see, now I'm talking like him! LABORS?!