Novel form

It's always a matter of personal taste when it comes to superlatives, but a lot of people seem to agree that this is the best epistolary novel ever written. For my part, I haven't read one to top it. Do you think this novel, which is also talked about as the first important and "mature" psychological novel, could have been as interesting written in a non-epistolary form?

What do you think the letters added to it?

For me, the biggest problem would seem to be personalizing each character. I wonder if that could be done as effectively without using personal letters as the device. Then there would be the problem of narrative point of view. And, perhaps most importantly, "moral" point of view; as it is, the collection of letters — a "found" story, as it were — tends to distance the "editor" from the action in a way that another kind of narrator would not be.

Jane Austen, the mother of the modern novel, began "Sense and Sensibility" a couple of decades later as an epistolary work, but abandoned that form in favor of a straightforward narrative and the more modern style that came to be identified with her.

Any thoughts on this and the choices/sacrifices/advantages involved?

(I thought the Close/Malkovich movie did a really fantastic job translating letters into scenes, particulary the chateau scene between the marquise and Cecile and the "war" scene between the marquise and Valmont).