Book Review: Here is New York (E.B. White)
Here is New York by E.B. White
E.B. White
White on the beach with his dachshund Minnie (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
The following comes via Wikipedia:
Elwyn Brooks White (July 11, 1899 – October 1, 1985)[1] was an American writer. He was the author of several highly popular books for children, including Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte’s Web (1952), and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970).
In a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, Charlotte’s Web was ranked first in their poll of the top one hundred children’s novels.[2] White also was a contributing editor to The New Yorker magazine and co-author of The Elements of Style, an English language style guide.
After graduating from Cornell, White went to work for the United Press, later United Press International, and the American Legion News Service in 1921 and 1922. From September 1922 to June 1923, he was a cub reporter for The Seattle Times. On one occasion, when White was stuck writing a story, a Times editor said, “Just say the words.”[15]
White was fired from the Times and later wrote for the rival Seattle Post-Intelligencer before a stint in Alaska on a fireboat.[16] He then worked for almost two years with the Frank Seaman advertising agency as a production assistant and copywriter[17] before returning to New York City in 1924.
In 1925, after The New Yorker was founded, White began submitting manuscripts to the magazine. Katharine Angell, the literary editor, recommended to editor-in-chief and founder Harold Ross that White be hired as a staff writer. However, it took months to convince White to attend a meeting at the office and additional weeks to convince him to work on the premises. He eventually agreed to work in the office on Thursdays.[18]
White published his first article for The New Yorker in 1925, then joined the staff in 1927, and continued to write for the magazine for nearly six decades. Best recognized for his essays and unsigned “Notes and Comment” pieces, he gradually became the magazine’s most important contributor. From the beginning to the end of his career at The New Yorker, he frequently provided what the magazine calls “Newsbreaks”, which were short, witty comments on oddly worded printed items from many sources, under various categories, such as “Block That Metaphor.” He also was a columnist for Harper’s Magazine from 1938 to 1943.
In 1949, White published Here Is New York, a short book based on an article he had been commissioned to write for Holiday. Editor Ted Patrick approached White about writing the essay, telling him it would be fun. “Writing is never ‘fun'”, White replied.[19] That article reflects the writer’s appreciation of a city that provides its residents with both “the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.” It concludes with a dark note touching on the forces that could destroy the city that he loved. This prescient “love letter” to the city was re-published in 1999 on his centennial with an introduction by his stepson, Roger Angell.
In 1959, White edited and updated The Elements of Style. This handbook of grammatical and stylistic guidance for writers of American English was first written and published in 1918 by William Strunk Jr., one of White’s professors at Cornell. White’s reworking of the book was extremely well received, and later editions followed in 1972, 1979, and 1999. Maira Kalman illustrated an edition in 2005. That same year, Nico Muhly, a New York City composer, premiered a short opera based on the book. The volume is a standard tool for students and writers and remains required reading in many composition classes. The complete history of The Elements of Style is detailed in Mark Garvey’s Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style.
Wikipedia – E.B. White (Career)
GoodReads Blurb
The back of the book blurb cover reads:
Perceptive, funny, and nostalgic, E.B. White’s stroll around Manhattan remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America’s foremost literary figures. The New York Times has named Here is New York one of the ten best books ever written about the metropolis, and The New Yorker calls it “the wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city.
Book Review
