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10 great articles and essays by e.b. white, articles/essays, once more to the lake, here is new york, farewell, my lovely, death of a pig, the sea and the wind that blows, the ring of time, the elements of style, 15 great essays about writing.

Essays of E. B. White

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This Essay From 1949 Is Still The Greatest Love Letter To New York City

Much has been written on the city of New York. It's the eternal backdrop for rom-coms and financial thrillers, the source of Harlem Renaissance poetry and meandering web-series set in Brooklyn. An endless sea of books, films, and blogs have put forth their opinions on the city, each as contradictory and final as the next (it's overrated, lonely, overcrowded, beautiful, dirty, loud, magnificent, and the damned trains don't work). But if there is an apotheosis of writing on the apotheosis of cities, it has to be E.B. White's aptly titled essay-turned-book Here Is New York .

E.B. White is best known today for his children's books, Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan, or for his writing style guide, The Elements of Style (he's the "White" in "Strunk & White"). He was also an essayist for The New Yorker and other publications for over fifty years, and "Here Is New York" might be his most celebrated essay. It's a straightforward stroll through the streets of Manhattan, the quintessential love letter to New York and New Yorkers. And, despite being published in 1948, it might be one of the most haunting pieces of post 9/11 literature ever written.

New York has changed since 1949, of course. America has changed. But to read "Here Is New York" today, it's impossible to shake the vague feeling that E.B. White was some kind of oracle, that he knew precisely which parts of the city would flourish, which would disappear, and how it might feel to live in New York in 2018, under the existential threat of war.

Here Is New York by E.B. White, $13, Amazon

White's essay begins by getting straight to the heart of New York's character:

On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.

It's not quite that simple, of course. White understands that New York is made up of a latticework of neighborhoods, interwoven pockets of community, and that New Yorkers are not really the cold-hearted creatures that slow walking tourists might see them as.

At the same time, though, White revels in New York's ability to cram in several million people and maintain an air of perfect solitude. There is spectacle and excitement if one wants spectacle and excitement, but every event is optional (with the exception, according to White, of the St. Patrick's Day parade, which "hits every New Yorker on the head").

He also understands that there is no single New York, but rather a number of different, overlapping cities, depending on who's looking:

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something...Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.

All of these conflicting New Yorks manage to meld and coexist, however, in a city that "has been compelled to expand skyward because of the absence of any other direction in which to grow." This cramped profusion of different lives and cultures only adds to the city, in White's opinion:

A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning. The city is like poetry: it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines. The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain elusive.

For all his rhapsodizing on the poetry of New York, though, White admits that the city can impart "a feeling of great forlornness or forsakenness," that it can often be "uncomfortable and inconvenient." But, as he puts it, "New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience — if they did they would live elsewhere.”

After all, "the city makes up for its hazards and deficiencies by supplying its citizens with massive doses of a supplementary vitamin: the sense of belonging to something unique, cosmopolitan, mighty, and unparalleled."

And then there are the last two pages of the essay.

The subtlest change in New York is something people don’t speak much about but that is in everyone’s mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.

White was writing about New York in the aftermath of World War II, after the introduction of the atomic bomb. But his words land squarely in the gut of any New Yorker who lived through 9/11, and of any American who currently lives under a president willing to make nuclear war the subject of angry tweets.

All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, new York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.

White does not want to comfort his reader or assure the eternal safety of New York. He's not interested in hand-wringing or fear-mongering. He only tries to make sense of the fear. He's here to remind us of the things that must be protected in a time of political turbulence. Turning against each other is not an option for a city build on coexistence.

The city at last perfectly illustrates both the universal dilemma and the general solution, this riddle in steel and stone is at once the perfect target and the perfect demonstration of nonviolence, of racial brotherhood, this lofty target scraping the skies and meeting the destroying planes halfway, home of all people and all nations, capital of everything...

Finally, White compresses his own fear, New York's fear, the world's fear, into one last paragraph:

A block or two west of the new City of Man in Turtle Bay there is an old willow tree that presides over an interior garden. It is a battered tree, long-suffering and much climbed, held together by strands of wire but beloved of those who know it. In a way it symbolizes the city: life under difficulties, growth against odds, sap-rise in the midst of concrete, and the steady reaching for the sun. Whenever I look at it nowadays, and feel the cold shadow of the planes, I think: "This must be saved, this particular thing, this very tree." If it were to go, all would go—this city, this mischievous and marvelous monument which not to look upon would be like death.

From across the gulf of history, writing in New York of the 1940's, he manages to capture the mingled hope and terror that comes with life in any city today.

Death of a Pig

“I just wanted to keep on raising a pig, full meal after full meal, spring into summer into fall.”

I spent several days and nights in mid-September with an ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of time, more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting. Even now, so close to the event, I cannot recall the hours sharply and am not ready to say whether death came on the third night or the fourth night. This uncertainty afflicts me with a sense of personal deterioration; if I were in decent health I would know how many nights I had sat up with a pig.

The scheme of buying a spring pig in blossom time, feeding it through summer and fall, and butchering it when the solid cold weather arrives, is a familiar scheme to me and follows an antique pattern. It is a tragedy enacted on most farms with perfect fidelity to the original script. The murder, being premeditated, is in the first degree but is quick and skillful, and the smoked bacon and ham provide a ceremonial ending whose fitness is seldom questioned.

Once in a while something slips — one of the actors goes up in his lines and the whole performance stumbles and halts. My pig simply failed to show up for a meal. The alarm spread rapidly. The classic outline of the tragedy was lost. I found myself cast suddenly in the role of pig’s friend and physician — a farcical character with an enema bag for a prop. I had a presentiment, the very first afternoon, that the play would never regain its balance and that my sympathies were now wholly with the pig. This was slapstick — the sort of dramatic treatment which instantly appealed to my old dachshund, Fred, who joined the vigil, held the bag, and, when all was over, presided at the interment. When we slid the body into the grave, we both were shaken to the core. The loss we felt was not the loss of ham but the loss of pig. He had evidently become precious to me, not that he represented a distant nourishment in a hungry time, but that he had suffered in a suffering world. But I’m running ahead of my story and shall have to go back. My pigpen is at the bottom of an old orchard below the house. The pigs I have raised have lived in a faded building which once was an icehouse. There is a pleasant yard to move about in, shaded by an apple tree which overhangs the low rail fence. A pig couldn’t ask for anything better — or none has, at any rate. The sawdust in the icehouse makes a comfortable bottom in which to root, and a warm bed. This sawdust, however, came under suspicion when the pig took sick. One of my neighbors said he thought the pig would have done better on new ground — the same principle that applies in planting potatoes. He said there might be something unhealthy about that sawdust, that he never thought well of sawdust. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when I first noticed that there was something wrong with the pig. He failed to appear at the trough for his supper, and when a pig (or a child) refuses supper a chill wave of fear runs through any household, or icehousehold. After examining my pig, who was stretched out in the sawdust inside the building, I went to the phone and cranked it four times. Mr. Henderson answered. “What’s good for a sick pig?” I asked. (There is never any identification needed on a country phone; the person on the other end knows who is talking by the sound of the voice and by the character of the question.) “I don’t know, I never had a sick pig,” said Mr. Henderson, “but I can find out quick enough. You hang up and I’ll call Irving.” Mr. Henderson was back on the line again in five minutes. “Irving says roll him over on his back and give him two ounces of castor oil or sweet oil, and if that doesn’t do the trick give him an injection of soapy water. He says he’s almost sure the pig’s plugged up, and even if he’s wrong, it can’t do any harm.” I thanked Mr. Henderson. I didn’t go right down to the pig, though. I sank into a chair and sat still for a few minutes to think about my troubles, and then I got up and went to the barn, catching up on some odds and ends that needed tending to. Unconsciously I held off, for an hour, the deed by which I would officially recognize the collapse of the performance of raising a pig; I wanted no interruption in the regularity of feeding, the steadiness of growth, the even succession of days. I wanted no interruption, wanted no oil, no deviation. I just wanted to keep on raising a pig, full meal after full meal, spring into summer into fall. I didn’t even know whether there were two ounces of castor oil on the place.

Shortly after five o’clock I remembered that we had been invited out to dinner that night and realized that if I were to dose a pig there was no time to lose. The dinner date seemed a familiar conflict: I move in a desultory society and often a week or two will roll by without my going to anybody’s house to dinner or anyone’s coming to mine, but when an occasion does arise, and I am summoned, something usually turns up (an hour or two in advance) to make all human intercourse seem vastly inappropriate. I have come to believe that there is in hostesses a special power of divination, and that they deliberately arrange dinners to coincide with pig failure or some other sort of failure. At any rate, it was after five o’clock and I knew I could put off no longer the evil hour. When my son and I arrived at the pigyard, armed with a small bottle of castor oil and a length of clothesline, the pig had emerged from his house and was standing in the middle of his yard, listlessly. He gave us a slim greeting. I could see that he felt uncomfortable and uncertain. I had brought the clothesline thinking I’d have to tie him (the pig weighed more than a hundred pounds) but we never used it. My son reached down, grabbed both front legs, upset him quickly, and when he opened his mouth to scream I turned the oil into his throat — a pink, corrugated area I had never seen before. I had just time to read the label while the neck of the bottle was in his mouth. It said Puretest. The screams, slightly muffled by oil, were pitched in the hysterically high range of pigsound, as though torture were being carried out, but they didn’t last long: it was all over rather suddenly, and, his legs released, the pig righted himself. In the upset position the corners of his mouth had been turned down, giving him a frowning expression. Back on his feet again, he regained the set smile that a pig wears even in sickness. He stood his ground, sucking slightly at the residue of oil; a few drops leaked out of his lips while his wicked eyes, shaded by their coy little lashes, turned on me in disgust and hatred. I scratched him gently with oily fingers and he remained quiet, as though trying to recall the satisfaction of being scratched when in health, and seeming to rehearse in his mind the indignity to which he had just been subjected. I noticed, as I stood there, four or five small dark spots on his back near the tail end, reddish brown in color, each about the size of a housefly. I could not make out what they were. They did not look troublesome but at the same time they did not look like mere surface bruises or chafe marks. Rather they seemed blemishes of internal origin. His stiff white bristles almost completedly hid them and I had to part the bristles with my fingers to get a good look. Several hours later, a few minutes before midnight, having dined well and at someone else’s expense, I returned to the pighouse with a flashlight. The patient was asleep. Kneeling, I felt his ears (as you might put your hand on the forehead of a child) and they seemed cool, and then with the light made a careful examination of the yard and the house for sign that the oil had worked. I found none and went to bed. We had been having an unseasonable spell of weather — hot, close days, with the fog shutting in every night, scaling for a few hours in midday, then creeping back again at dark, drifting in first over the trees on the point, then suddenly blowing across the fields, blotting out the world and taking possession of houses, men, and animals. Everyone kept hoping for a break, but the break failed to come. Next day was another hot one. I visited the pig before breakfast and tried to tempt him with a little milk in his trough. He just stared at it, while I made a sucking sound through my teeth to remind him of past pleasures of the feast. With very small, timid pigs, weanlings, this ruse is often quite successful and will encourage them to eat; but with a large, sick pig the ruse is senseless and the sound I made must have made him feel, if anything, more miserable. He not only did not crave food, he felt a positive revulsion to it. I found a place under the apple tree where he had vomited in the night. At this point, although a depression had settled over me, I didn’t suppose that I was going to lose my pig. From the lustiness of a healthy pig a man derives a feeling of personal lustiness; the stuff that goes into the trough and is received with such enthusiasm is an earnest of some later feast of his own, and when this suddenly comes to an end and the food lies stale and untouched, souring in the sun, the pig’s imbalance becomes the man’s, vicariously, and life seems insecure, displaced, transitory.

As my own spirits declined, along with the pig’s, the spirits of my vile old dachshund rose. The frequency of our trips down the footpath through the orchard to the pigyard delighted him, although he suffers greatly from arthritis, moves with difficulty, and would be bedridden if he could find anyone willing to serve him meals on a tray. He never missed a chance to visit the pig with me, and he made many professional calls on his own. You could see him down there at all hours, his white face parting the grass along the fence as he wobbled and stumbled about, his stethoscope dangling — a happy quack, writing his villainous prescriptions and grinning his corrosive grin. When the enema bag appeared, and the bucket of warm suds, his happiness was complete, and he managed to squeeze his enormous body between the two lowest rails of the yard and then assumed full charge of the irrigation. Once, when I lowered the bag to check the flow, he reached in and hurriedly drank a few mouthfuls of the suds to test their potency. I have noticed that Fred will feverishly consume any substance that is associated with trouble — the bitter flavor is to his liking. When the bag was above reach, he concentrated on the pig and was everywhere at once, a tower of strength and inconvenience. The pig, curiously enough, stood rather quietly through this colonic carnival, and the enema, though ineffective, was not as difficult as I had anticipated. I discovered, though, that once having given a pig an enema there is no turning back, no chance of resuming one of life’s more stereotyped roles. The pig’s lot and mine were inextricably bound now, as though the rubber tube were the silver cord. From then until the time of his death I held the pig steadily in the bowl of my mind; the task of trying to deliver him from his misery became a strong obsession. His suffering soon became the embodiment of all earthly wretchedness. Along toward the end of the afternoon, defeated in physicking, I phoned the veterinary twenty miles away and placed the case formally in his hands. He was full of questions, and when I casually mentioned the dark spots on the pig’s back, his voice changed its tone. “I don’t want to scare you,” he said, “but when there are spots, erysipelas has to be considered.” Together we considered erysipelas, with frequent interruptions from the telephone operator, who wasn't sure the connection had been established. “If a pig has erysipelas can he give it to a person?” I asked. “Yes, he can,” replied the vet. “Have they answered?” asked the operator. “Yes, they have,” I said. Then I addressed the vet again. “You better come over here and examine this pig right away.” “I can’t come myself,” said the vet, “but McDonald can come this evening if that’s all right. Mac knows more about pigs than I do anyway. You needn't worry too much about the spots. To indicate erysipelas they would have to be deep hemorrhagic infarcts.” “Deep hemorrhagic what?” I asked. “Infarcts,” said the vet. “Have they answered?” asked the operator. “Well,” I said, “I don’t know what you’d call these spots, except they’re about the size of a housefly. If the pig has erysipelas I guess I have it, too, by this time, because we’ve been very close lately.” “McDonald will be over,” said the vet. I hung up. My throat felt dry and I went to the cupboard and got a bottle of whiskey. Deep hemorrhagic infarcts — the phrase began fastening its hooks in my head. I had assumed that there could be nothing much wrong with a pig during the months it was being groomed for murder; my confidence in the essential health and endurance of pigs had been strong and deep, particularly in the health of pigs that belonged to me and that were part of my proud scheme. The awakening had been violent and I minded it all the more because I knew that what could be true of my pig could be true also of the rest of my tidy world. I tried to put this distasteful idea from me, but it kept recurring. I took a short drink of the whiskey and then, although I wanted to go down to the yard and look for fresh signs, I was scared to. I was certain I had erysipelas. It was long after dark and the supper dishes had been put away when a car drove in and McDonald got out. He had a girl with him. I could just make her out in the darkness — she seemed young and pretty. “This is Miss Wyman,” he said. “We’ve been having a picnic supper on the shore, that’s why I’m late.” McDonald stood in the driveway and stripped off his jacket, then his shirt. His stocky arms and capable hands showed up in my flashlight’s gleam as I helped him find his coverall and get zipped up. The rear seat of his car contained an astonishing amount of paraphernalia, which he soon overhauled, selecting a chain, a syringe, a bottle of oil, a rubber tube, and some other things I couldn’t identify. Miss Wyman said she’d go along with us and see the pig. I led the way down the warm slope of the orchard, my light picking out the path for them, and we all three climbed the fence, entered the pighouse, and squatted by the pig while McDonald took a rectal reading. My flashlight picked up the glitter of an engagement ring on the girl’s hand. “No elevation,” said McDonald, twisting the thermometer in the light. “You needn’t worry about erysipelas.” He ran his hand slowly over the pig’s stomach and at one point the pig cried out in pain. “Poor piggledy-wiggledy!” said Miss Wyman. The treatment I had been giving the pig for two days was then repeated, somewhat more expertly, by the doctor, Miss Wyman and I handing him things as he needed them — holding the chain that he had looped around the pig’s upper jaw, holding the syringe, holding the bottle stopper, the end of the tube, all of us working in darkness and in comfort, working with the instinctive teamwork induced by emergency conditions, the pig unprotesting, the house shadowy, protecting, intimate. I went to bed tired but with a feeling of relief that I had turned over part of the responsibility of the case to a licensed doctor. I was beginning to think, though, that the pig was not going to live.

He died twenty-four hours later, or it might have been forty-eight — there is a blur in time here, and I may have lost or picked up a day in the telling and the pig one in the dying. At intervals during the last day I took cool fresh water down to him and at such times as he found the strength to get to his feet he would stand with head in the pail and snuffle his snout around. He drank a few sips but no more; yet it seemed to comfort him to dip his nose in water and bobble it about, sucking in and blowing out through his teeth. Much of the time, now, he lay indoors half buried in sawdust. Once, near the last, while I was attending him I saw him try to make a bed for himself but he lacked the strength, and when he set his snout into the dust he was unable to plow even the little furrow he needed to lie down in. He came out of the house to die. When I went down, before going to bed, he lay stretched in the yard a few feet from the door. I knelt, saw that he was dead, and left him there: his face had a mild look, expressive neither of deep peace nor of deep suffering, although I think he had suffered a good deal. I went back up to the house and to bed, and cried internally — deep hemorrhagic intears. I didn’t wake till nearly eight the next morning, and when I looked out the open window the grave was already being dug, down beyond the dump under a wild apple. I could hear the spade strike against the small rocks that blocked the way. Never send to know for whom the grave is dug, I said to myself, it’s dug for thee. Fred, I well knew, was supervising the work of digging, so I ate breakfast slowly. It was a Saturday morning. The thicket in which I found the gravediggers at work was dark and warm, the sky overcast. Here, among alders and young hackmatacks, at the foot of the apple tree, Howard had dug a beautiful hole, five feet long, three feet wide, three feet deep. He was standing in it, removing the last spadefuls of earth while Fred patrolled the brink in simple but impressive circles, disturbing the loose earth of the mound so that it trickled back in. There had been no rain in weeks and the soil, even three feet down, was dry and powdery. As I stood and stared, an enormous earthworm which had been partially exposed by the spade at the bottom dug itself deeper and made a slow withdrawal, seeking even remoter moistures at even lonelier depths. And just as Howard stepped out and rested his spade against the tree and lit a cigarette, a small green apple separated itself from a branch overhead and fell into the hole. Everything about this last scene seemed overwritten—the dismal sky, the shabby woods, the imminence of rain, the worm (legendary bedfellow of the dead), the apple (conventional garnish of a pig). But even so, there was a directness and dispatch about animal burial, I thought, that made it a more decent affair than human burial: there was no stopover in the undertaker’s foul parlor, no wreath nor spray; and when we hitched a line to the pig’s hind legs and dragged him swiftly from his yard, throwing our weight into the harness and leaving a wake of crushed grass and smoothed rubble over the dump, ours was a businesslike procession, with Fred, the dishonorable pallbearer, staggering along in the rear, his perverse bereavement showing in every seam in his face; and the post mortem performed handily and swiftly right at the edge of the grave, so that the inwards which had caused the pig’s death preceded him into the ground and he lay at last resting squarely on the cause of his own undoing. I threw in the first shovelful, and then we worked rapidly and without talk, until the job was complete. I picked up the rope, made it fast to Fred’s collar (he is a notorious ghoul), and we all three filed back up the path to the house, Fred bringing up the rear and holding back every inch of the way, feigning unusual stiffness. I noticed that although he weighed far less than the pig, he was harder to drag, being possessed of the vital spark. The news of the death of my pig traveled fast and far, and I received many expressions of sympathy from friends and neighbors, for no one took the event lightly and the premature expiration of a pig is, I soon discovered, a departure which the community marks solemnly on its calendar, a sorrow in which it feels fully involved. I have written this account in penitence and in grief, as a man who failed to raise his pig, and to explain my deviation from the classic course of so many raised pigs. The grave in the woods is unmarked, but Fred can direct the mourner to it unerringly and with immense good will, and I know he and I shall often revisit it, singly and together, in seasons of reflection and despair, on flagless memorial days of our own choosing.

About the Author

What E.B. White Has to Say About Writing

New York Times Co./Getty Images

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Meet essayist E.B. White—and consider the advice he has to offer on writing and the writing process . Andy, as he was known to friends and family, spent the last 50 years of his life in an old white farmhouse overlooking the sea in North Brooklin, Maine. That's where he wrote most of his best-known essays, three children's books, and a best-selling style guide .

Introduction to E.B. White

A generation has grown up since E.B. White died in that farmhouse in 1985, and yet his sly, self-deprecating voice speaks more forcefully than ever. In recent years, Stuart Little has been turned into a franchise by Sony Pictures, and in 2006 a second film adaptation of Charlotte's Web was released. More significantly, White's novel about "some pig" and a spider who was "a true friend and a good writer" has sold more than 50 million copies over the past half-century.

Yet unlike the authors of most children's books, E.B. White is not a writer to be discarded once we slip out of childhood. The best of his casually eloquent essays—which first appeared in Harper's , The New Yorker , and The Atlantic in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s—have been reprinted in Essays of E.B. White (Harper Perennial, 1999). In "Death of a Pig," for instance, we can enjoy the adult version of the tale that was eventually shaped into Charlotte's Web . In "Once More to the Lake," White transformed the hoariest of essay topics—"How I Spent My Summer Vacation"—into a startling meditation on mortality. 

For readers with ambitions to improve their own writing, White provided The Elements of Style (Penguin, 2005)—a lively revision of the modest guide first composed in 1918 by Cornell University professor William Strunk, Jr. It appears in our short list of essential Reference Works for Writers .

White was awarded the Gold Medal for Essays and Criticism of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, the National Medal for Literature, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1973 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

E.B. White's Advice to a Young Writer

What do you do when you're 17 years old, baffled by life, and certain only of your dream to become a professional writer? If you had been "Miss R" 35 years ago, you would have composed a letter to your favorite author, seeking his advice. And 35 years ago, you would have received this reply from E. B. White:

Dear Miss R: At seventeen, the future is apt to seem formidable, even depressing. You should see the pages of my journal circa 1916. You asked me about writing—how I did it. There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed. I must have written half a million words (mostly in my journal) before I had anything published, save for a couple of short items in St. Nicholas. If you want to write about feelings, about the end of summer, about growing, write about it. A great deal of writing is not "plotted"—most of my essays have no plot structure, they are a ramble in the woods, or a ramble in the basement of my mind. You ask, "Who cares?" Everybody cares. You say, "It's been written before." Everything has been written before.

I went to college but not direct from high school; there was an interval of six or eight months. Sometimes it works out well to take a short vacation from the academic world—I have a grandson who took a year off and got a job in Aspen, Colorado. After a year of skiing and working, he is now settled into Colby College as a freshman. But I can't advise you, or won't advise you, on any such decision. If you have a counselor at school, I'd seek the counselor's advice. In college (Cornell), I got on the daily newspaper and ended up as editor of it. It enabled me to do a lot of writing and gave me a good journalistic experience. You are right that a person's real duty in life is to save his dream, but don't worry about it and don't let them scare you. Henry Thoreau, who wrote Walden, said, "I learned this at least by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." The sentence, after more than a hundred years, is still alive. So, advance confidently. And when you write something, send it (neatly typed) to a magazine or a publishing house. Not all magazines read unsolicited contributions, but some do. The New Yorker is always looking for new talent. Write a short piece for them, send it to The Editor. That's what I did forty-some years ago. Good luck. Sincerely, E. B. White

Whether you're a young writer like "Miss R" or an older one, White's counsel still holds. Advance confidently, and good luck.

E.B. White on a Writer's Responsibility

In an interview for The Paris Review in 1969, White was asked to express his "views about the writer's commitment to politics, international affairs." His response:

A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. I feel no obligation to deal with politics. I do feel a responsibility to society because of going into print: a writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down. Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.

E.B. White on Writing for the Average Reader

In an essay titled "Calculating Machine," White wrote disparagingly about the "Reading-Ease Calculator," a device that presumed to measure the "readability" of an individual's writing style.

There is, of course, no such thing as reading ease of written matter. There is the ease with which matter can be read, but that is a condition of the reader, not of the matter.

There is no average reader, and to reach down toward this mythical character is to deny that each of us is on the way up, is ascending.

It is my belief that no writer can improve his work until he discards the dulcet notion that the reader is feebleminded, for writing is an act of faith, not of grammar. Ascent is at the heart of the matter. A country whose writers are following the calculating machine downstairs is not ascending—if you will pardon the expression—and a writer who questions the capacity of the person at the other end of the line is not a writer at all, merely a schemer. The movies long ago decided that a wider communication could be achieved by a deliberate descent to a lower level, and they walked proudly down until they reached the cellar. Now they are groping for the light switch, hoping to find the way out.

E.B. White on Writing With Style

In the final chapter of The Elements of Style (Allyn & Bacon, 1999), White presented 21 "suggestions and cautionary hints" to help writers develop an effective style. He prefaced those hints with this warning:

Young writers often suppose that style is a garnish for the meat of prose, a sauce by which a dull dish is made palatable. Style has no such separate entity; is nondetachable, unfilterable. The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is himself he is approaching, no other; and he should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style—all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.

Writing is, for most, laborious and slow. The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in his blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up. Like other gunners, he must cultivate patience; he may have to work many covers to bring down one partridge.

You'll notice that while advocating a plain and simple style, White conveyed his thoughts through artful metaphors .

E.B. White on Grammar

Despite the prescriptive tone of The Elements of Style , White's own applications of grammar and syntax were primarily intuitive, as he once explained in The New Yorker :

Usage seems to us peculiarly a matter of ear. Everyone has his own prejudices, his own set of rules, his own list of horribles. The English language is always sticking a foot out to trip a man. Every week we get thrown, writing merrily along. English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment, and education—sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across a street.

E.B. White on Not Writing

In a book review titled "Writers at Work," White described his own writing habits—or rather, his habit of putting off writing.

The thought of writing hangs over our mind like an ugly cloud, making us apprehensive and depressed, as before a summer storm, so that we begin the day by subsiding after breakfast, or by going away, often to seedy and inconclusive destinations: the nearest zoo, or a branch post office to buy a few stamped envelopes. Our professional life has been a long shameless exercise in avoidance. Our home is designed for the maximum of interruption, our office is the place where we never are. Yet the record is there. Not even lying down and closing the blinds stops us from writing; not even our family, and our preoccupation with same, stops us.

• Tetracolon Climax (Rhetoric and Sentence Styles)
• Postscript (P.S.) Definition and Examples in Writing
• Definition and Examples of Vignettes in Prose
• What Does "Persona" Mean?
• 100 Major Works of Modern Creative Nonfiction
• Definition and Examples of Parallel Structure
• What is Identification in Rhetoric?
• Third-Person Point of View
• Reading Quiz on 'Once More to the Lake' by E. B. White
• What Is a Colloquialism?
• E.B. White's Diction and Metaphors in 'Death of a Pig'
• What Is a Personal Essay (Personal Statement)?
• E.B. White's Drafts of 'Once More to the Lake'
• What's the Secret of Good Writing?
• What Is Imagery (In Language)?
• The Complimentary Close in a Letter or Email

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E. b. white , the art of the essay no. 1, issue 48, fall 1969.

If it happens that your parents concern themselves so little with the workings of boys’ minds as to christen you Elwyn Brooks White, no doubt you decide as early as possible to identify yourself as E.B. White. If it also happens that you attend Cornell, whose first president was Andrew D. White, then, following a variant of the principle that everybody named Rhodes winds up being nicknamed “Dusty,” you wind up being nicknamed “Andy.” And so it has come about that for fifty of his seventy years Elwyn Brooks White has been known to his readers as E.B. White and to his friends as Andy. Andy White. Andy and Katharine White. The Whites. Andy and Katharine have been married for forty years, and in that time they have been separated so rarely that I find it impossible to think of one without the other. On the occasions when they have been obliged to be apart, Andy’s conversation is so likely to center on Katharine that she becomes all the more present for being absent.

The Whites have shared everything, from professional association on the same magazine to preoccupation with a joint ill health that many of their friends have been inclined to regard as imaginary. Years ago, in a Christmas doggerel, Edmund Wilson saluted them for possessing “ mens sana in corpore insano, ” and it was always wonderful to behold the intuitive seesaw adjustments by which one of them got well in time for the other to get sick. What a mountain of good work they have accumulated in that fashion! Certainly they have been the strongest and most productive unhealthy couple that I have ever encountered, but I no longer dare to make fun of their ailments. Now that age is bestowing on them a natural infirmity, they must be sorely tempted to say to the rest of us, “You see? What did we tell you?” (“Sorely,” by the way, has been a favorite adverb of Andy’s- a word that brims with bodily woe and that yet hints at the heroic: back of Andy, some dying knight out of Malory lifts his gleaming sword against the dusk.)

Andy White is small and wiry, with an unexpectedly large nose, speckled eyes, and an air of being just about to turn away, not on an errand of any importance but as a means of remaining free to cut and run without the nuisance of prolonged good-byes. Crossing the threshold of his eighth decade, his person is uncannily boyish-seeming. Though his hair is grey, I learn at this moment that I do not consent to the fact: away from him, I remember it as brown, therefore it is brown to me. Andy can no more lose his youthfulness by the tiresome accident of growing old than he could ever have been Elwyn by the tiresome un-necessary accident of baptism; his youth and his “Andy”-ness are intrinsic and inexpungeable. Katharine White is a woman so good-looking that nobody has taken it amiss when her husband has described in print as beautiful, but her beauty has a touch of blue-eyed augustness in it, and her manner is formal. It would never occur to me to go beyond calling her Katharine, and I have not found it surprising when her son, Roger Angell, an editor of  The New Yorker , refers to her within the office precincts as “Mrs. White.” (Roger Angell is the son of her marriage to a distinguished New York attorney, Ernest Angell; she and Andy have a son, Joe, who is a naval architect and whose boatyard is a thriving enterprise in the Whites’ hometown of Brooklin, Maine.)

At the risk of reducing a man’s life to a sort of Merck’s Manual, I may mention that Andy White’s personal physician, Dana Atchley- giving characteristically short shrift to a psychosomatic view of his old friend- has described him as having a Rolls Royce mind in a Model T body. With Andy, this would pass for a compliment, because in the tyranny of his modesty he would always choose to be a Ford instead of a Rolls, but it would be closer to the truth to describe him as a Rolls Royce mind in a Rolls Royce body that unaccountably keeps bumping to a stop and humming to itself, not without infinite pleasure to others along the way. What he achieves must cost him a considerable effort and appears to cost him very little. His speaking voice, like his writing voice, is clear, resonant, and invincibly debonair. He wanders over the pastures of his Maine farm or, for that matter, along the labyrinthine corridors of  The New Yorker  offices on West Forty-Third Street with the off-hand grace of a dancer making up a sequence of steps that the eye follows with delight and that defies any but his own notation. Clues to the bold and delicate nature of those steps are to be discovered in every line he writes, but the man and his work are so nearly one that, try as we will, we cannot tell the dancer from the dance.

  -Brendan Gill

INTERVIEWER

So many critics equate the success of a writer with an unhappy childhood. Can you say something of your own childhood in Mount Vernon?

As a child, I was frightened but not unhappy. My parents were loving and kind. We were a large family (six children) and were a small kingdom unto ourselves. Nobody ever came to dinner. My father was formal, conservative, successful, hardworking, and worried. My mother was loving, hardworking, and retiring. We lived in a large house in a leafy suburb, where there were backyards and stables and grape arbors. I lacked for nothing except confidence. I suffered nothing except the routine terrors of childhood: fear of the dark, fear of the future, fear of the return to school after a summer on a lake in Maine, fear of making an appearance on a platform, fear of the lavatory in the school basement where the slate urinals cascaded, fear that I was unknowing about things I should know about. I was, as a child, allergic to pollens and dusts, and still am. I was allergic to platforms, and still am. It may be, as some critics suggest, that it helps to have an unhappy childhood. If so, I have no knowledge of it. Perhaps it helps to have been scared or allergic to pollens—I don’t know.

At what age did you know you were going to follow a literary profession? Was there a particular incident, or moment?

I never knew for sure that I would follow a literary profession. I was twenty-seven or twenty-eight before anything happened that gave me any assurance that I could make a go of writing. I had  done  a great deal of writing, but I lacked confidence in my ability to put it to good use. I went abroad one summer and on my return to New York found an accumulation of mail at my apartment. I took the letters, unopened, and went to a Childs restaurant on Fourteenth Street, where I ordered dinner and began opening my mail. From one envelope, two or three checks dropped out, from  The New Yorker . I suppose they totaled a little under a hundred dollars, but it looked like a fortune to me. I can still remember the feeling that “this was it”—I was a pro at last. It was a good feeling and I enjoyed the meal.

What were those first pieces accepted by  The New Yorker ? Did you send them in with a covering letter, or through an agent?

They were short sketches—what Ross called “casuals.” One, I think, was a piece called “The Swell Steerage,” about the then new college cabin class on transatlantic ships. I never submitted a manuscript with a covering letter or through an agent. I used to put my manuscript in the mail, along with a stamped envelope for the rejection. This was a matter of high principle with me: I believed in the doctrine of immaculate rejection. I never used an agent and did not like the looks of a manuscript after an agent got through prettying it up and putting it between covers with brass clips. (I now have an agent for such mysteries as movie rights and foreign translations.)

A large part of all early contributions to  The New Yorker  arrived uninvited and unexpected. They arrived in the mail or under the arm of people who walked in with them. O’Hara’s “Afternoon Delphians” is one example out of hundreds. For a number of years,  The New Yorker  published an average of fifty new writers a year. Magazines that refuse unsolicited manuscripts strike me as lazy, incurious, self-assured, and self-important. I’m speaking of magazines of general circulation. There may be some justification for a technical journal to limit its list of contributors to persons who are known to be qualified. But if I were a publisher, I wouldn’t want to put out a magazine that failed to examine everything that turned up.

But did  The New Yorker  ever try to publish the emerging writers of the time: Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Passos, Fitzgerald, Miller, Lawrence, Joyce, Wolfe, et al?

The New Yorker  had an interest in publishing any writer that could turn in a good piece. It read everything submitted. Hemingway, Faulkner, and the others were well established and well paid when  The New Yorker  came on the scene. The magazine would have been glad to publish them, but it didn’t have the money to pay them off, and for the most part they didn’t submit. They were selling to  The Saturday Evening Post  and other well-heeled publications, and in general were not inclined to contribute to the small, new, impecunious weekly. Also, some of them, I would guess, did not feel sympathetic to  The New Yorker ’s frivolity. Ross had no great urge to publish the big names; he was far more interested in turning up new and yet undiscovered talent, the Helen Hokinsons and the James Thurbers. We did publish some things by Wolfe—“Only the Dead Know Brooklyn” was one. I believe we published something by Fitzgerald. But Ross didn’t waste much time trying to corral “emerged” writers. He was looking for the ones that were found by turning over a stone.

What were the procedures in turning down a manuscript by a  New Yorker  regular? Was this done by Ross?

The manuscript of a  New Yorker  regular was turned down in the same manner as was the manuscript of a  New Yorker  irregular. It was simply rejected, usually by the subeditor who was handling the author in question. Ross did not deal directly with writers and artists, except in the case of a few old friends from an earlier day. He wouldn’t even take on Woollcott—regarded him as too difficult and fussy. Ross disliked rejecting pieces, and he disliked firing people—he ducked both tasks whenever he could.

Did feuds threaten the magazine?

Feuds did not threaten  The New Yorker . The only feud I recall was the running battle between the editorial department and the advertising department. This was largely a one-sided affair, with the editorial department lobbing an occasional grenade into the enemy’s lines just on general principles, to help them remember to stay out of sight. Ross was determined not to allow his magazine to be swayed, in the slightest degree, by the boys in advertising. As far as I know, he succeeded.

When did you first move to New York, and what were some of the things you did before joining  The New Yorker ? Were you ever a part of the Algonquin group?

After I got out of college, in 1921, I went to work in New York but did not live in New York. I lived at home, with my father and mother in Mount Vernon, and commuted to work. I held three jobs in about seven months—first with the United Press, then with a public relations man named Wheat, then with the American Legion News Service. I disliked them all, and in the spring of 1922 I headed west in a Model T Ford with a college mate, Howard Cushman, to seek my fortune and as a way of getting away from what I disliked. I landed in Seattle six months later, worked there as a reporter on the  Times  for a year, was fired, shipped to Alaska aboard a freighter, and then returned to New York. It was on my return that I became an advertising man—Frank Seaman & Co., J. H. Newmark. In the mid-twenties, I moved into a two-room apartment at 112 West Thirteenth Street with three other fellows, college mates of mine at Cornell: Burke Dowling Adams, Gustave Stubbs Lobrano, and Mitchell T. Galbreath. The rent was $110 a month. Split four ways it came to $27.50, which I could afford. My friends in those days were the fellows already mentioned. Also, Peter Vischer, Russell Lord, Joel Sayre, Frank Sullivan (he was older and more advanced but I met him and liked him), James Thurber, and others. I was never a part of the Algonquin group. After becoming connected with  The New Yorker,  I lunched once at the Round Table but didn’t care for it and was embarrassed in the presence of the great. I never was well acquainted with Benchley or Broun or Dorothy Parker or Woollcott. I did not know Don Marquis or Ring Lardner, both of whom I greatly admired. I was a younger man.

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On Nate Lippens

“The spiky poetic homelessness of My Dead Book is in relation to a devotion to not fitting in, not anywhere ever.”

The Art of Editing No. 4

By the time I arrived in New York in the late seventies, Lapham was established in the city’s editorial elite, up there with William Shawn at The New Yorker and Barbara Epstein and Bob Silvers at The New York Review of Books . He was a glamorous fixture at literary parties and a regular at Elaine’s. In 1988, he raised plutocratic hackles by publishing Money and Class in America , a mordant indictment of our obsession with wealth. For a brief but glorious couple of years, he hosted a literary chat show on public TV called Bookmark , trading repartee with guests such as Joyce Carol Oates, Gore Vidal, Alison Lurie, and Edward Said. All the while, a new issue of Harper’s would hit the newsstands every month, with a lead essay by Lapham that couched his erudite observations on American society and politics in Augustan prose.

Today Lapham is the rare surviving eminence from that literary world. But he has managed to keep a handsome bit of it alive—so I observed when I went to interview him last summer in the offices of Lapham’s , a book-filled, crepuscular warren on a high floor of an old building just off Union Square. There he presides over a compact but bustling editorial operation, with an improbably youthful crew of subeditors. One LQ intern, who had also done stints at other magazines, told me that Lapham was singular among top editors for the personal attention he showed to each member of his staff.

Our conversation took place over several sessions, each around ninety minutes. Despite the heat, he was always impeccably attired: well-tailored blue blazer, silk tie, cuff links, and elegant loafers with no socks. He speaks in a relaxed baritone, punctuated by an occasional cough of almost orchestral resonance—a product, perhaps, of the Parliaments he is always dashing outside to smoke. The frequency with which he chuckles attests to a vision of life that is essentially comic, in which the most pervasive evils are folly and pretension.

I was familiar with such aspects of the Lapham persona. But what surprised me was his candid revelation of the struggle and self-doubt that lay behind what I had imagined to be his effortlessness. Those essays, so coolly modulated and intellectually assured, are the outcome of a creative process filled with arduous redrafting, rejiggering, revision, and last-minute amendment in the teeth of the printing press. And it is a creative process that always begins—as it did with his model, Montaigne—not with a dogmatic axiom to be unpacked but in a state of skeptical self-questioning: What do I really know? If there a unifying core to Lapham’s dual career as an editor and an essayist, that may be it.

— Jim Holt

Analysis of E. B. White’s “Once More to the Lake”

E.B. White’s essay, Once More to the Lake , which was first published in 1941, describes his experience as he revisits a childhood lake in Maine. This revisiting is a journey in which White delights in memories associated with his childhood and the lake. In effect, his mindset transforms and goes back to his childhood. This transformation is necessary for him to find enjoyment in the journey. However, the transformation also emphasizes an altered perception of the actual lake. For instance, instead of viewing the lake as it is, he uses his childhood eyes to perceive the lake. This condition creates an interesting departure from reality into what he wants to see based on his childhood experiences. Once More to the Lake is a depiction of E. B. White’s experience as he visits a lake once again – the lake that he has been fond of since childhood.

E. B. White’s experience brings him to the lakefront, where he finds himself staring at the same lake, which is virtually unchanged. This means that White focuses on the unchanging things despite the surrounding changes and the changes that he experiences in his life. White wants to emphasize the permanence of some things, or at least the permanence of the memory of those things, despite the never-ending change that happens in the world.

Even though the lake itself has not changed, E. B. White’s essay indicates that there are some changes in things that are separate from the lake. For example, when White arrives at the lakefront, he wishes to enjoy the scene and the experience of being at the lake once again, but he becomes bothered by the noise of the new boats that are on the lake. The new boats have noisier engines.

E. B. White wants to show that technology can be disruptive. Technology can, indeed, make things become faster and more efficient, but it can also make things noisier, more disruptive, or undesirable. Thus, White emphasizes the negative side of new technologies. Nonetheless, as White continues his story, it is indicated that he has a liking for old engines. This liking started from his childhood. Even though he first views technology as something disruptive, the essay also touches on personal perception and preference. For instance, White does not like the new engines and the noise they make. However, this dislike could be due to his desire and expectation to see boats with the old engines that he saw in his childhood.

Some things may not change. All things change based on the underlying principle that nothing is constant in this world and that every little thing changes. However, there are some things that may not change, such as the thought of a person, the feelings that one has toward other people, and the longing for something. E.B. White shows that the lake is unchanged, but this may be only in his own perception. It is possible that the lake has already changed when he arrives as an adult at the lakefront, but his perception of the lake does not change. This perception and the associated emotions do not change, as he still likes what he sees and feels.

His experience of being at the lakefront brings him back to his childhood years when he was a boy experiencing the lake. Considering that White shows that his perception switches between that of an adult and that of a boy, it is arguable that his actual experience of the lake as an adult is marred by such switching between perceptions. It is possible that the actual lake that he revisits is already different, but his perception, as a boy, does not change, thereby making the lake only virtually unchanged. Also, the technology that he refers to, in the form of new and noisier engines, may have also been affected by such switching in his perceptions. It is possible that the new and noisier boats are not really that disruptive. It is just that he is used to the old and less noisy ones, thereby making his claims about the new boats personally subjective and not necessarily real.

E.B. White’s lake is a symbol of the role of physical spaces in personal development. For example, the essay shows that the lake serves as a setting for familial interactions, especially in the author’s past. Also, the lake serves as a venue for reflection. When White goes back to the lake, it facilitates his reflection of change and development. The lake helps him think back and develop a better understanding of his situation.

E.B. White’s essay, Once More to the Lake , supports the idea of the necessity of permanence in life. Even though the lake has changed over the years, it remains a lake that the author can visit. His current visit to the lake also represents his desire to be there. The lake stands as a reminder of his childhood experiences. In this regard, the lake sheds light on the benefit of having some form or degree of permanence in life. This permanence can help anchor the person and his psychological development.

• White, E. B. (1941). Once More to the Lake .
• White, E. B. (2016). Essays of E. B. White . Perennial.
• Copyright by Panmore Institute - All rights reserved.
• This article may not be reproduced, distributed, or mirrored without written permission from Panmore Institute and its author/s.
• Educators, Researchers, and Students: You are permitted to quote or paraphrase parts of this article (not the entire article) for educational or research purposes, as long as the article is properly cited and referenced together with its URL/link.

Once More to the Lake

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First published in Harper’s magazine in 1941, “Once More to the Lake” narrates White’s visit to Belgrade Lakes, Maine, where he had vacationed as a child.

Golden Pond in Belgrade Lakes. Image via Maine Travel Maven.

For a fresh look at White’s timeless children’s novel, Charlotte’s Web , read the Lit Genius original, “Hidden Threads: Revisiting "Charlotte’s Web”.

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Eighty-Five from the Archive: E. B. White

_This year is The New Yorker’s eighty-fifth anniversary. To celebrate, over eighty-five weekdays we will turn a spotlight on a notable article, story, or poem from the magazine’s history. The issue containing that day’s selected piece will be made freely available in our digital archive and will remain open until the next day’s selection is posted.

Today’s selection is E. B. White’s “ Comment ” from August 18, 1945.

In a 1969 Times interview , the American essayist and stylist E. B. White was asked what he cherished most in life: “I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive word.” Grave is not typically a term associated with White, who for fifty years was the whimsical, intellectual soul of The New Yorker . From 1925 to 1976 he crafted more than eighteen hundred pieces for the magazine and established, in the words of editor William Shawn, “a new literary form.” That form was the magazine’s Comment essay—a personal essay that was, in White’s hands, light in style yet often weighty in substance. As White noted in a 1969 Paris Review interview, > I do feel a responsibility to society because of going into print: a writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down. Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.

White was born in Mount Vernon, New York, in 1899, the youngest of six children. After attending Cornell University, where he acquired the nickname Andy, he worked as a reporter for the United Press and then the Seattle Times , before returning to New York to work at an advertising agency. During this period, he sold a number of poems to Franklin P. Adams’s “The Conning Tower” column. In 1925, he submitted several pieces to The New Yorker , and the following year he took a job at the magazine editing newsbreaks. Ross soon approached White about writing Comment, and it was there that he quickly established the editorial voice of the magazine. As White’s good friend James Thurber observed , in 1938,> Harold Ross and Katharine Angell, his literary editor, were not slow to perceive that here were the perfect eye and ear, the authentic voice and accent for their struggling magazine…. His contributions to the Talk of the Town, particularly his Notes and Comment on the first page, struck the shining note that Ross had dreamed of striking.

In addition to Comment, White also contributed light verse, casuals, longer essays, and captions for cartoons (most famously, “ I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it! ”). His intimate essays, which his stepson, the New Yorker fiction editor Roger Angell, once said “took down the fences of manner … and pomposity in writing,” were remarkable examples of White’s ability to relate the quotidian to the topical. In a 1985 Postscript in this magazine, John Updike observed ,> The least pugnacious of editorialists, [White] was remarkably keen and quick in the defense of personal liberty and purity of expression, whether the threat was as overt as McCarthyism or totalitarianism or as seemingly innocuous as … Alexander Woollcott’s endorsement of a brand of whiskey. American freedom was not just a notion to him; it was an instinct, a current in the blood, expressed by his very style and his untrammelled thought, his cunning informality, his courteous skepticism, his boundless and gallant capacity for wonder.

White married Katharine Angell in 1929, the same year that he and Thurber published their satire on Freudianism, “Is Sex Necessary?” In 1938, White and Angell left New York and settled in Maine, where White wrote a monthly column, “One Man’s Meat,” for Harper ’ s magazine. White began writing Comment again for The New Yorker in the spring of 1943, and he also took up writing what would later become a children’s classic, “Stuart Little” (1945), which was soon followed by another classic, “Charlotte’s Web,” published in 1952. Of his children’s writing, White once said , “Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down.” White continued writing for the magazine until the late seventies, and he was awarded an honorary Pulitzer Prize in 1978. He died in Maine, on October 1, 1985, at the age of eighty-six.

Today we highlight a Comment that ran in the issue of August 18, 1945. The essay examines White’s visceral skepticism about the beginnings of the atomic age. In this excerpt , White questions just how far man is willing to go in his pursuit of victory:> We thought back over the whole long war, trying to remember the terrible distances and the terrible decisions, the setbacks, the filth and the horror, the bugs, the open wounds, the fellows on the flight decks and on the beaches and in the huts and holes, the resolution and the extra bravery—and all for what? Why, for liberty. “Liberty, the first of blessings, the aspiration of every human soul … every abridgment of it demands an excuse, and the only good excuse is the necessity of preserving it. Whatever tends to preseve this is right, all else is wrong.” And we tried to imagine what it will mean to a soldier, having gone out to fight a war to preserve the world as he knew it, now to return to a world he never dreamt about, a world of atomic designs and portents. Some say this is the beginning of a great time of peace and plenty, because atomic energy is so fearsome no nation will dare unleash it. The argument is fragile. One nation (our own) has already dared take the atom off its leash, has dared crowd its luck, and not for the purpose of conquering the world, merely to preserve liberty.

In England the other day a philosopher and a crystallographer held a debate. The question was whether a halt should be called on science. The discussion was academic, since there is no possibility of doing any such thing. Nevertheless, it was a nice debate. Professor Bernal, the crystallographer, argued that children should be allowed to play with dangerous toys in order that they may learn to use them properly. Joad, the philosopher, said no—science changes our environment faster than we have the ability to adjust ourselves to it. The words were hardly out of his mouth when a blind girl in Albuquerque, noticing a strange brightness in the room, looked up and said, “What was that?” A bomb had exploded a hundred and twenty miles away in the New Mexican desert. And people all over the world were soon to be adjusting themselves to their new environment. For the first time in our lives, we can feel the disturbing vibrations of complete human readjustment. Usually the vibrations are so faint as to go unnoticed. This time, they are so strong that even the ending of a war is overshadowed. Today it is not so much the fact of the end of a war which engages us. It is the limitless power of the victor. The quest for a substitute for God ended suddenly. The substitute turned up. And who do you suppose it was? It was man himself, stealing God’s stuff.

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Essays of E. B. White (Perennial Classics) Paperback – December 12, 2006

"Some of the finest examples of contemporary, genuinely American prose. White's style incorporates eloquence without affection, profundity without pomposity, and wit without frivolity or hostility. Like his predecessors Thoreau and Twain, White's creative, humane, and graceful perceptions are an education for the sensibilities."  —  Washington Post

The classic collection by one of the greatest essayists of our time.

Selected by E.B. White himself, the essays in this volume span a lifetime of writing and a body of work without peer.  "I have chosen the ones that have amused me in the rereading," he writes in the Foreword, "alone with a few that seemed to have the odor of durability clinging to them." These essays are incomparable; this is a volume to treasure and savor at one's leisure.

• Print length 384 pages
• Language English
• Publication date December 12, 2006
• Dimensions 5.31 x 0.86 x 8 inches
• ISBN-10 0060932236
• ISBN-13 978-0060932237
• Lexile measure 1200L
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

"His voice rumbles with authority through sentences of surpassing grace. In his more than fifty years at The New Yorker, White set a standard of writerly craft for that supremely well-wrought magazine. In genial, perfectly poised essay after essay, he has wielded the English language with as much clarity and control as any American of his time." — Raymond Sokolov, Newsweek

"Some of the finest examples of contemporary, genuinely American prose. White's style incorporates eloquence without affection, profundity without pomposity, and wit without frivolity or hostility. Like his predecessors Thoreau and Twain, White's creative, humane, and graceful perceptions are an education for the sensibilities." — Washington Post

"The abiding spirit of these essays is humane, compassionate, traditionalistic. No matter what his subject, White always keeps his eye on the long view and the larger perspective. There are times when I feel his work is as much a national resource as the Liberty Bell, a call to the best and noblest in us." — Jonathan Yardley, San Francisco Examiner

From the Back Cover

About the author.

E. B. White, the author of such beloved classics as Charlotte's Web , Stuart Little , and The Trumpet of the Swan , was born in Mount Vernon, New York. He graduated from Cornell University in 1921 and, five or six years later, joined the staff of The New Yorker magazine, then in its infancy. He died on October 1, 1985, and was survived by his son and three grandchildren.

Mr. White's essays have appeared in Harper's magazine, and some of his other books are: One Man's Meat , The Second Tree from the Corner , Letters of E. B. White , Essays of E. B. White , and Poems and Sketches of E. B. White . He won countless awards, including the 1971 National Medal for Literature and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, which commended him for making a "substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children."

During his lifetime, many young readers asked Mr. White if his stories were true. In a letter written to be sent to his fans, he answered, "No, they are imaginary tales . . . But real life is only one kind of life—there is also the life of the imagination."

From The Washington Post

"Some of the finest examples of contemporary, genuinely American prose. White's style incorporates eloquence without affection, profundity without pomposity, and wit without frivolity or hostility. Like his predecessors Thoreau and Twain, White's creative, humane, and graceful perceptions are an education for the sensibilities."

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Essays of e. b. white, good-bye to forty-eighth street, turtle bay, november 12, 1957.

For some weeks now I have been engaged in dispersing the contents of this apartment, trying to persuade hundreds of inanimate objects to scatter and leave me alone. It is not a simple matter. I am impressed by the reluctance of one's worldly goods to go out again into the world. During September I kept hoping that some morning, as by magic, all books, pictures, records, chairs, beds, curtains, lamps, china, glass, utensils, keepsakes would drain away from around my feet, like the outgoing tide, leaving me standing silent on a bare beach, But this did not happen. My wife and I diligently sorted and discarded things from day to day, and packed other objects for the movers, but a sixroom apartment holds as much paraphernalia as an aircraft carrier. You can whittle away at it, but to empty the place completely takes real ingenuity and great staying power. On one of the mornings of disposal, a man from a second-hand bookstore visited us, bought several hundred books, and told us of the death of his brother, the word "cancer" exploding in the living room like a time bomb detonated by his grief. Even after he had departed with his heavy load, there seemed to be almost as many books as before, and twice as much sorrow.

Every morning, when I left for work, I would take something in my hand and walk off with it, for deposit in the big municipal wire trash basket at the corner of Third, on the theory that the physical act of disposal was the real key to the problem. My wife, a strategist, knew better and began quietly mobilizing the forces that would eventually put our goods to rout. A man could walk away for a thousand mornings carrying something with him to the corner and there would still be a home full of stuff. It is not possible to keep abreast of the normal tides of acquisition. A home is like a reservoir equipped with a check valve: the valve permits influx but prevents outflow. Acquisition goes on night and day -- smoothly, subtly, imperceptibly. I have no sharp taste for acquiring things, but it is not necessary to desire things in order to acquire them. Goods and chattels seek a man out; they find him even though his guard is up. Books and oddities arrive in the mail. Gifts arrive on anniversaries and fete days. Veterans send ballpoint pens. Banks send memo books. If you happen to be a writer, readers send whatever may be cluttering up their own lives; I had a man once send me a chip of wood that showed the marks of a beaver's teeth. Someone dies, and a little trickle of indestructible keepsakes appears, to swell the flood. This steady influx is not counterbalanced by any comparable outgo. Under ordinary circumstances, the only stuff that leaves a home is paper trash and garbage; everything else stays on and digs in.

Lately we haven't spent our nights in the apartment; we are bivouacked in a hotel and just come here mornings to continue the work. Each of us has a costume. My wife steps into a cotton dress while I shift into midnight-blue tropical pants and bowling shoes. Then we buckle down again to the unending task.

All sorts of special problems arise during the days of disposal. Anyone who is willing to put his mind to it can get rid of a chair, say, but what about a trophy? Trophies are like leeches. The ones made of paper, such as a diploma from a school or a college, can be burned if you have the guts to light the match, but the ones made of bronze not only are indestructible but are almost impossible to throw away, because they usually carry your name, and a man doesn't like to throw away his good name, or even his bad one. Some busybody might find it. People differ in their approach to trophies, of course. In watching Edward R. Murrow's "Person to Person" program on television, I have seen several homes that contained a "trophy room," in which the celebrated pack rat of the house had assembled all his awards, so that they could give out the concentrated aroma of achievement whenever he wished to loiter in such an atmosphere. This is all very well if you enjoy the stale smell of success, but if a man doesn't care for that air he is in a real fix when disposal time comes up. One day a couple of weeks ago, I sat for a while staring moodily at a plaque that had entered my life largely as a result of some company's zest for promotion. It was bronze on walnut, heavy enough to make an anchor for a rowboat, but I didn't need a rowboat anchor, and this thing had my name on it. By deft work with a screwdriver, I finally succeeded in prying the nameplate off; I pocketed this, and carried the mutilated remains to the corner, where the wire basket waited. The work exhausted me more than did the labor for which the award was presented.

Another day, I found myself on a sofa between the chip of wood gnawed by the beaver and an honorary hood I had once worn in an academic procession. What I really needed at the moment was the beaver himself, to eat the hood. I shall never wear the hood again, but I have too weak a character to throw it away, and I do not doubt that it will tag along with me to the end of my days, not keeping me either warm or happy but occupying a bit of my attic space.

Right in the middle of the dispersal, while the mournful rooms were still loaded with loot, I had a wonderful idea: we would shut the apartment, leave everything to soak for a while, and go to the Fryeburg Fair, in Maine, where we could sit under a tent at a cattle auction and watch somebody else trying to dispose of something. A fair, of course, is a dangerous spot if a man is hoping to avoid acquisition, and the truth is I came close to acquiring a very pretty whiteface heifer, safe in calf-which would...

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint edition (December 12, 2006)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0060932236
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060932237
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1200L
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.86 x 8 inches
• #602 in Essays (Books)
• #804 in Author Biographies
• #6,071 in Memoirs (Books)

About the author

E. b. white.

E.B. White, the author of twenty books of prose and poetry, was awarded the 1970 Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for his children's books, Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web. This award is now given every three years "to an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have, over a period of years, make a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children." The year 1970 also marked the publication of Mr. White's third book for children, The Trumpet of the Swan, honored by The International Board on Books for Young People as an outstanding example of literature with international importance. In 1973, it received the Sequoyah Award (Oklahoma) and the William Allen White Award (Kansas), voted by the school children of those states as their "favorite book" of the year.

Born in Mount Vernon, New York, Mr. White attended public schools there. He was graduated from Cornell University in 1921, worked in New York for a year, then traveled about. After five or six years of trying many sorts of jobs, he joined the staff of The New Yorker magazine, then in its infancy. The connection proved a happy one and resulted in a steady output of satirical sketches, poems, essays, and editorials. His essays have also appeared in Harper's Magazine, and his books include One Man's Meat, The Second Tree from the Corner, Letters of E.B. White, The Essays of E.B. White and Poems and Sketches of E.B. White. In 1938 Mr. White moved to the country. On his farm in Maine he kept animals, and some of these creatures got into his stories and books. Mr. White said he found writing difficult and bad for one's disposition, but he kept at it. He began Stuart Little in the hope of amusing a six-year-old niece of his, but before he finished it, she had grown up.

For his total contribution to American letters, Mr. White was awarded the 1971 National Medal for Literature. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy named Mr. White as one of thirty-one Americans to receive the Presidential Medal for Freedom. Mr. White also received the National Institute of Arts and Letters' Gold Medal for Essays and Criticism, and in 1973 the members of the Institute elected him to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a society of fifty members. He also received honorary degrees from seven colleges and universities. Mr. White died on October 1, 1985.

Photo by White Literary LLC [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Customers say

Customers find the essays wonderful, brilliant, and detailed. They describe the book as a delicious, incredible, and enjoyable read. Readers appreciate the good sense of humor, amusing, and hysterical writing. They also describe the approach as matter-of-fact and easy to read.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the essays wonderful, brilliant, and finely crafted. They appreciate the simple, clean prose and figurative language. Readers also mention the essays give an interesting perspective on his life through the decades. Overall, they describe the book as a wonderful collection of his talent and skill.

"...Besides the fact that it contains some of the best essays of all time, the book's foreword provides insight into the authors' views on the genre and..." Read more

" Every essay is wonderful ." Read more

"...essays is that they can be counted on to be insightful, amusing and well-written . White approaches an essay like a pleasant conversation...." Read more

"He's one of the best humorist I have ever read. Fascinating observations on humanity .Highly recommend." Read more

Customers find the book delicious, incredible, and enjoyable. They appreciate the author's ability to entertain and inform readers on wide-ranging subjects. Readers also describe the writing as lucid, charming, and engaging.

"...White impresses me most with his ability to entertain and inform readers on wide-ranging subjects...." Read more

"...They are entertaining without being too demanding , and are a great way to set day-to-day concerns aside. Treat yourself to a good read." Read more

"...For the design of this Harper edition, I absolutely love the cover and the tactile quality of it. (It also draws attention to his dachshund, Fred)...." Read more

"... Reading the essays was a pleasure and I just enjoyed dipping back into the book, the topics didn't really matter: packing up an apartment for a move..." Read more

Customers find the humor in the book insightful, amusing, and hysterical. They also appreciate the wonderful nostalgia and humor.

"...about White's essays is that they can be counted on to be insightful, amusing and well-written...." Read more

"He's one of the best humorist I have ever read. Fascinating observations on humanity.Highly recommend." Read more

"...Enjoy his writing style-detail oriented & good sense of humor ." Read more

"...E B White makes a trip in his car an exciting adventure. His essays are full of humor . Life was more rustic...." Read more

Customers find the book easy to read. They appreciate the simple, beautiful, and to-the-point English usage. Readers also mention the author's approach is matter-of-fact, easygoing, and accessible.

"...It's just that his approach is so matter-of- fact , easy going and accessible that you feel you've been invited to tea or are taking a leisurely..." Read more

"...never pretentious, always clear, simple and beautiful." Read more

"...White is a fantastic, skillful writer and his essays are the perfect introduction to his work...." Read more

" Simple , beautiful, to the point English usage with a dash of healthy humor." Read more

Customers find the pacing of the book provoking, wide-ranging, and sympathetic. They also say the author has a kind, calming presence in his writings.

"...The pig story is classic EB White.... so humane , so clear his writing...a man who can make you grieve for a dying spider and a dying pig is a man who..." Read more

"Beautiful little book . E.B.White has such a kind calming presence in his writings .i generally don't read non fiction but picked this up because it..." Read more

"EB White's essays are thought-provoking, wide-ranging, sympathetic and gorgeously written...." Read more

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Rare and Manuscript Collections

The e.b. white collection.

The Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections holds the archive of American essayist and author E. B. White, a graduate of Cornell University’s class of 1921.

The E.B. White Collection contains manuscripts, letters, documents, clippings, photographs, filmstrips, film reels, note cards, cassette tapes, bound photocopies, medals and awards by, to, or about E.B. White, spanning the entire range of his activities throughout his life. Letters consist of ca. 3,000 letters by White and 25,000 letters to him from others. Correspondents include: Katharine Sergeant White (his wife), James Thurber, Frank Sullivan, Harold Ross, William Shawn, Gus Lobrano, S.J. Perelman, Nathaniel Benchley, Howard Cushman, Alice Burchfield Sumner, Scott Elledge, and publishers such as Harper & Row, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and Macmillan.

Manuscripts consist of drafts, notes, and some galley proofs for his books  Charlotte’s Web,   The Elements of Style , the  Essays of E.B. White , the  Letters of E.B. White ,  One Man’s Meat, The Points of My Compass ,  Poems and Sketches , and  Stuart Little , as well as drafts of his “Notes and comment” and “Talk of the Town” columns for the New Yorker magazine from 1934-1953.

Printed materials include a comprehensive collection of published books by E.B. White, in multiple editions and translations; White’s contributions to the New Yorker and other magazines; his editorials for his high school newspaper; and ca. 350 articles about him, including interviews. Related manuscript and book collections include those concerning New Yorker writers A.J. Liebling, Frank Sullivan, and James Thurber.

Related Online Resources

• Guide to the E. B. White Collection

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Essays of E. B. White

Description.

"Some of the finest examples of contemporary, genuinely American prose. White's style incorporates eloquence without affection, profundity without pomposity, and wit without frivolity or hostility. Like his predecessors Thoreau and Twain, White's creative, humane, and graceful perceptions are an education for the sensibilities." — Washington Post

The classic collection by one of the greatest essayists of our time.

Selected by E.B. White himself, the essays in this volume span a lifetime of writing and a body of work without peer. "I have chosen the ones that have amused me in the rereading," he writes in the Foreword, "alone with a few that seemed to have the odor of durability clinging to them." These essays are incomparable; this is a volume to treasure and savor at one's leisure.

Kindle Book

• ISBN: 9780062348753
• Release date: February 25, 2014

OverDrive Read

• File size: 651 KB

Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook

History Literary Criticism Nonfiction

Lexile® Measure: 1200 Text Difficulty: 9-12

Publisher: HarperCollins

Kindle Book ISBN: 9780062348753 Release date: February 25, 2014

OverDrive Read ISBN: 9780062348753 Release date: February 25, 2014

EPUB ebook ISBN: 9780062348753 File size: 651 KB Release date: February 25, 2014

• E. B. White - Author
• Formats Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook
• Languages English
• Levels Lexile® Measure: 1200 Text Difficulty: 9-12

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A collection of wisdom, a focus on the universal

E. B. White on the Nature and Complexity of New York City

"On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy."

"[A] reason I like the city better than the country," wrote accustomed New Yorker Andy Warhol in his propulsive capsule of personal philosophy,  "Is that in the city everything is geared to working, and in the country, everything is geared to relaxation. I like working better than relaxation."

Such is the person we find in New York City: the urgent doer. Everything is being done all the time with purpose if not expediency. And the resultant neurosis, like Warhol's, or existential drama, like that of Patti Smith or Dorothy Parker, is borne alongside wild cab rides and excellent take-out.

Can we ever blazon our mark on this City, Parker seems to ask once, or does it merely mark us?

If I should labor through daylight and dark, Consecrate, valorous, serious, true, Then on the world I may blazon my mark; And what if I don’t, and what if I do? From Dorothy Parker's "Philosophy"

Like Parker, American essayist Elwyn Brooks "E. B." White (July 11, 1899 – October 1, 1985)  wrote for fifty years at The  New Yorker   E. B. White might easily be a name you've heard but cannot place (my husband informed me he suffered such, so I thought I better explain).       White is best-known for the children's classics, Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little . He also updated the work of his former writing professor at Cornell, William Strunk, to create Strunk & White's  Elements of Style.   Check out the illustrated The Elements of Style by fellow New Yorker Maira Kalman . and offers us this slice of the metropolis:

On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city's walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town. From E. B. White's "Here is New York"

The idea of this collection of strangers sits well with me and most inhabitants would agree it is a city of anonymity.

And yet, there are boundaries to that privacy, that isolation.

New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost every body wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute. Since I have been sitting in this miasmic air shaft, a good many rather splashy events have occurred in town. A man shot and killed his wife in a fit of jealousy. It caused no stir outside his block and got only a small mention in the papers. I did not attend. Since my arrival, the greatest air show ever staged in all the world took place in town. I did not attend. From E. B. White's "Here is New York"

As White notices, we have immunity to things outside our boundaries. But not always. The results can be grand (see Rebecca Solnit's study of human intervention and compassion in the face of disaster ) or repetitively grating. White addresses the latter:

New York has changed in tempo and in temper during the years I have known it. There is greater tension, and increased irritability. You encounter it in many places, in many faces. The normal frustrations of modern life are here multiplied and amplified—a single run of a cross-town bus contains, for the driver, enough frustration and annoyance to carry him over the edge of sanity: the light that changes always an instant too soon, the passenger that bangs on the shut door, the truck that blocks the only opening, the coin that slips to the floor, the question asked at the wrong moment..." From E. B. White's "Here is New York"

New York City was White's residence, a place he understood thoroughly (like filmmaker Sidney Lumet or poet Grace Paley ) but never called "home."

As a result, his portrait of this inimitable city is diverse and complex. He seems to ask, is New York a thing or an atmosphere? Should we give it qualities of personhood? Does it inhale and exhale? How do we engage?

Essays of E. B. White present the dry humor and self-effacing ploy of an English author (he wasn't) and the loving detail of a highly observant and philosophical man (he was). It is also stepping apart to give us something universal about place.

White's essay about the 1939 World's Fair set in Queens and false thoughts on the poisoned promises of the future - something by its essence never arrives and is always anticipated - could be republished every fifty years on the hour.

It is all rather serious-minded, this World of Tomorrow, and extremely impersonal. [...] When the night falls in the General Motors exhibit and you lean back in the cushioned chair (yourself in motion and the world so still) and hear (from the depths of the chair) the soft-electric assurance of a better life—the life that rests on wheels alone—there is a strong, sweet poison which infects the blood. I didn't want to wake up. From E. B. White's "The World of Tomorrow"

My favorite piece in Essays of E. B. White is "Good-Bye to Forty-Eighth Street," an essay about leaving New York for good. White tears through all of the little collections that amass in homes—"as much paraphernalia as an aircraft can hold," the things we've made precious by caring . What to get rid of, what to keep, disposing of the indispensable.

It is an essay about the abandonment of things, of city, of self.

I kept hoping that some morning, as by magic, all books, pictures, records, chairs, beds, curtains, lamps, china, glass, utensils, keepsakes would drain away from around my feet, like an outgoing tide. But this did not happen. [...] You can whittle away at it, but to empty the place completely takes real ingenuity and great staying power. From E. B. White's "Goodbye to Forty-eighth Street"

White moved to Maine - he called it his home - and remained there until he died in 1985. When Andy Warhol died, two years after White, his massive collection (hoard), all acquired on the streets and shops of New York, was untouched and eventually sold at auction. The artist, as a collector, had taken shape. He never moved his things, never divorced himself from the City. Did he ever relax? Did he change the map of New York?

It is easy to become enamored by White's deceptively blithe musings of place (he is what we non-New Yorkers would call "down to earth", lines like "I wasn't prepared for the World's Fair and it certainly wasn't prepared for me") and take his detachment for granted.

White is, indeed, one of many writers who occasionally sets down his pen, takes a lengthy look in the mirror, and draws a self-portrait, concluding, "The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him is of general interest." A grievance leveled at New Yorkers by non-New Yorkers all the time.

I prefer contemporary writer and New Yorker Durga Chew Bose's simple singlet "The best ideas outrun me. That's why I write." For some, writing is simply done

Again, the doing. How many writers are outwriting their thoughts right now?

White continues:

The essayist arises in the morning and, if he has work to do, selects his garb from an unusually extensive wardrobe: he can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person according to his mood or subject matter—philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast.

Like Ernest Hemingway, a writer born the same year as White, who wrote truth must be the point of origin of all writing , White believed "Candor […] is the basic ingredient." It might not always be interesting, but one should still look, write, and present. In a word, care.

Perhaps that is what Warhol meant by "relax"; it is striving, to care . In New York, we (I flex between "we" and "they" for I have lived there but am not of there) are always striving. Relentlessly American that way.

So, do we ever impose ourselves on the city, or is it only on us? Grace Paley wrote of this:

At the Battery I am standing on one foot at the prow of great Manhattan leaning forward projecting a little into the bright harbor If only a topographer in a helicopter would pass over my shadow I might be imposed forever on the maps of this city. From Grace Paley's "At the Battery"

That such a city could hold the minds and aspirations of so many, without knuckling them together in defeat, and without wholly changing its maps, never ceases to amaze me. New York holds it all together, remains, and yet still moves. It is this being that White wrangles within Essays.

While White wrote and Parker posed and Warhola vacillated, so many others were making their way, as the case may be, like  James Baldwin  selling wares in the streets at seven, or Billie Holliday  who cleaned brothels at age 10, or Joan Didion imbibing the pain of her grief-soaked apartment.

All overlapping, crossing paths, intersecting. They might, as White said, "all be strangers" but they certainly have this grand, grand thing in common.

Ellen Vrana

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Essays of E.B. White

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