BOOK WEEK: More voyeurism

Damn, but isn't David on a roll with this book week thing? So far, he's done mystery books, food books, and books from NPR.

I guess I should pick up the slack a little. One of my book-related obsessions is collections of correspondance. Again, this plays into the voyeurism I talked about a few days or weeks ago. There's a certain sense of prying that comes with reading letters that weren't necessarily intended for public consumption, which is part of the appeal. Also, letters tend to be more "from the cuff" than edited prose, so they have the appeal of imediacy - there's no lengthy editing process beyond what the writer intended.

One such collection, A Literate Passion, collects letters sent back and forth between Henry Miller and Anais Nin. Miller's letters have the same blend of rawness and tenderness that exists in his novels, and Nin's letters provide a slightly different insight from her more well-known diaries. Of all the collections of correspondance I've read, this one feels (to me, at least), the most invasive, but not in a bad way.

If A Literate Passion gives insight into a love affair, Life In Letters gives an insight into a man. The joy of this is reading Fitzgerald's letters to everyone - his editors, his family, his friends. While a collection of this scope lacks a focus in terms of subject matter, it does not lack intimacy. Really, this is an essential book for any fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald, or for a unique take on early 20th century American literature.

EDIT: In my haste to get this up, and with stuff going on at work, I forgot to mention another one: Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters: 1940-1956. I've got a weakness for "Beat Generation" works, but lets be honest - Kerouac, as a novelist, isn't that great a thing (my own personal exceptions being The Dharma Bums, Big Sur and The Subterraneans, which I think hold up better than On The Road). However, as a letter writer... The contents of this book are more often than not more interesting reading than his novels, and the letters to Kerouac (particularly from Neal Cassady) are just as interesting.