Randall Jarrell's Letters

Reviews / Votes

Witty, often brilliantly perceptive, often touching, usually funny, [these letters] have many of the best qualities of Randall Jarrell's criticism and his comic novel, Pictures from an Institution. They bristle with ideas while they also show great freshness and openness to experience.... Of recent collections of letters, only Flannery O'Connor's seem to me to rival these in their consistently high level of interest and entertainment. - Washington Post Book World ""Randall Jarrell - poet, critic, daimon - was an Enthusiast. Wedding an intense devotion to Old World culture with the frequent exhibition of glad American anarchy, he was Matthew Arnold at the wheel of an MG, tach up, top down, the wind in his literary hair."" - Boston Globe ""Mary Jarrell... has written witty and observant connecting passages that shape the book into a rounded narrative and... has unveiled Randall Jarrell's final enduring literary work. And in doing so, she has created her own."" - Charlotte Observer