Books » Letters & Correspondence

Welcome to the rejection-letter hall of fame, where the hopes and dreams of celebrities (Jimi Hendrix, Andy Warhol, among others) are crushed alongside the aspirations of the rest of us. You'll find handwritten notes from former lovers, nasty e-mails from would-be bosses, heated texts, crayon scrawlings, and surprising dismissals from Playboy, Disney, even the pope. To unearth this collection, Bill Shapiro searched America's desk drawers, hard drives, and government files. But what at first seems to be a voyeuristic jaunt through other people's flops is ultimately a testimony to everyone who has at least tried. And while rejection's sting is painful, it is not lethal; here, you'll see that one of the great universals is not only people's desire for acceptance but also their ability to persevere.
 
BILL SHAPIRO is the editor in chief of LIFE.com and the former editor of LIFE magazine. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

These have been called the most famous and beloved letters of our century. Rainer Maria Rilke himself said that much of his creative expression went into his correspondence, and here he touches upon a wide range of subjects that will interest writers, artists, and thinkers. This edition includes a new foreword by Kent Nerburn, author of Small Graces and Letters to My Son.

Seinfeld. For more than 33 million viewers, the Emmy Award-winning television show has become a Thursday night ritual. Now, even though the show has ended, Jerry Seinfeld's distinct brand of humor can still be yours.

Ted L. Nancy's first book, Letters from a Nut, with an introduction by Jerry Seinfeld, now has more than 225,000 copies in print. In More Letters From a Nut, master-prankster Nancy shares even more sidesplittingly funny letters he has written and the unbelievable true responses he has received.

Fifty-nine "Stern sonnets" of twenty or so lines from the 1998 National Book Award winner. This stunning collection moves from autobiography to the visionary in surges of memory and language that draw the reader from one poem to the next. "I was taken over by the writing of these poems," Stern says.

Some thirty years after the initial publication of Montesquieu's "Persian Letters" in 1721, the author hinted at the presence of "a secret, and somehow unnoticed, chain" tying together this entertaining, insightful, yet disparate collection of fictional letters to and from two Persian travellers in France. Ever since Montesquieu's subtle hint, readers have tried to identify the chain, but the riddle has resisted solution. The reason may be that no one has actually looked for a hidden chain - composed of separate links - but instead for a unifying theme. In "The Art of the Persian Letters," Randolph Runyon takes the chain metaphor seriously, showing that the chain is not thematic but linguistic and structural, as each letter is linked to its neighbors on either side by echoing words and situations despite their different contexts. Montesquieu's epistolary novel emerges as a delightfully self-referential work of art, full of hidden allusions to their persistently doubling structure. Randolph Paul Runyon is Professor of French at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Bernard Shaw was twenty-four and Sidney Webb twenty-one when they met in October 1880 at a gathering of a debating club called the Zetetical Society. Having sympathetic interests, both men decided, after some personal and joint exploration, to devote their lives to improving the human condition. This collection of 140 annotated letters, 74 of which have never been published, documents the subsequent friendship and collaboration shared by Shaw, Webb, and Webb's wife Beatrice, throughout their lives.

The letters, written between 1883 and 1946, discuss the founding of the Fabian Society, the British Labour Party, the London School of Economics, and the New Statesman through the Boer, First, and Second World Wars. Fully annotated with headnotes and footnotes, this collection will expand the general view of Shaw the dramatist to incorporate Shaw the political activist and lifelong friend of the Webbs.

Thirty-five sketches, including pieces on Voltaire, Frederick the Great, Rousseau, Gibbon, Walpole, Boswell, Carlyle, and Sarah Bernhardt, by one of the great biographical writers of this century. Companion volume to Strachey's Literary Essays. Index.

A brilliant personality, remarkable novelist and legendary letter writer, it is widely known that Nancy Mitford was also a bookseller. From 1942-6 she worked in Heywood Hill's famous shop in Curzon Street, and effectively ran it when the male staff were called up for war service. After the war she left to live in France but maintained an abiding interest in the shop, its stock, and its many and varied customers who themselves form a cavalcade of the literary stars of post war Britain. Her letters to Heywood advise on recent French titles that might appeal to him and his customers, gossip engagingly about life in Paris, and enquire anxiously about the reception of her own books while seeking advice about new titles to read. In return Heywood kept her up to date with customers and their foibles, and with aspects of literary and bookish life in London. Charming, witty and irresistible the correspondence gives brilliant insights into a world that has almost disappeared.

Tull MacAdoo TD is kept busy procuring jobs and IRA pensions for deserving voters and keeping his spendthrift son under control. Somehow he must also contest an election and save his reputation while holding fast to his personal philosophy: "Forage between honesty and crookedness and do the best you can".

Martin O'Mora, the Parish Priest of Lochnanane dispenses justice in his own inimitable way. While battling for the souls of his parishioners, he must also deal with his nephew's shaky vocation, a sex-crazed curate and an uncontrollable outbreak of inflatable dolls.

The clients of Dicky Mick Dicky O'Connor require spouses that are willing, wealthy and in perfect working order - difficult to find in the underpopulated hinterlands of Ballybarra, but anything is possible for a gifted matchmaker.

Pages: 280, Paperback, Black Sparrow Press