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Despite this epistolary “mind control,” Roberts soldiered on, landing his first TV gig in 1977 on the soap opera “Another World.”

Cyrano’s verbal coaching and epistolary interventions provide a means for him to express all that is locked away in his heart.

Barth also challenged literary conventions in his 1979 epistolary novel “Letters,” in which characters from his first six novels wrote to each other, and he inserted himself as a character as well.

But the epistolary style of the book is used not to dish dirt or list grievances.

Part of the problem is it’s an epistolary novel, a genre that’s effective because what characters hide is as revelatory as what they reveal.