The Oxford Book of Letters

Rating:
Summary: Eerie omniscience of "Spoon River Anthology"-bigger canvas
Review: Eavesdropping: one of humanity's favourite games. This book lets you read other people's mail over the course of a few centuries.

There's a saying "We photograph ourselves every time we open our mouths". I was reminded of the atmospheres conjured by Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon River Anthology", wherein deceased citizens of an American small town declaim their real epitaphs, rather than the ones on the stones overhead. As with that book, I grew gradually aware of being in the powerful company of an identity in whom all the stories become one. There is an odd sense of incompleteness about the book-perhaps one of your letters and one of mine are awaited?

A seemingly plotless sweep through history that develops the voice of an operatic choir as you read on. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Snapshots in a Fresh Album
Review: This is a very intimate book. The letters, occasionally one or two letters to give a sense of an important author's life, literally do give you a brief glimpse into a living life - like one of those apartment windows Edward Hopper paints, or views seen fleetingly from a train - these letters open up a life to you, often at a moment of great crisis - Alexander Pope's formal letter mourning the death of a friend bursts out uncontrollably despite his reserve at the turn of a line - and sometimes they are quiet letters, saying not much at all except how the picnic was and the very texture of life is given in a half a page. The Kermodes have given, in their dual editorship, a wider spectrum than I believe any one editor's personality and tastes could have plumbed. A book to return to again and again, rediscovering authors whose collected letters you might go and try to find. A book for always finding new friends in, or re-assessing authors you thought you knew in the light of what they wrote a lover, or a friend, when no-one was reading what they read but their own love.