"If Thomas Mallon -- when it comes to this
collection of letters, at least -- were a blanket, he'd be a crazy quilt[
..].This isn't to say that "Yours Ever" shouldn't be read -- it's crammed with
interesting snippets from all over the place [...]Mallon begins his survey with
the Paston letters [...] there are two puzzling paragraphs about "Samuel
Johnson's rejection of praise for his 'Dictionary' from Lord
Chesterfield...One page later, the punch-drunk reader is hit with three
pages of Vladimir Nabokov vs. Edmund Wilson.