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E(lwyn) B(rooks) White (1899-1985) |
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Leading American essayist and literary stylist of his time. E. B. White was known for his crisp, graceful, relaxed style. "No one can write a sentence like White," James Thurber once stated. White's stories ranged from satire to children's fiction. While he often wrote from the perspective of slightly ironic onlooker, he also was a sensitive spokesman for the freedom of the individual. Among his most enduring essays is 'Once More to the Lake.' I am a man of medium height. I keep my records in a Weis Folder Re-order Number 8003. The unpaid balance of my estimated tax for the year 1945 is item 3 less the sum of items 4 and 5. My eyes are gray. My Selective Service order number is 109789. The serial number is T1654. I am in Class IV-A, and have been variously in Class 3-A, Class I-A (H) and Class 4-H. My social security number is 067-01-9841. I am married to US Woman Number 06701-9807. Her eyes are gray. This is not a joint declaration, nor is it made by an agent; therefore it need be signed only by me—and, as I said, I am a man of medium height. (from 'About Myself,' in The Oxford Book of Essays, chosen and edited by John Gross, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 486; originally published in The New Yorker, February 2, 1945) Elwyn Brooks White was born in Mount Vernon, New York, the son of
Samuel White, a prosperous piano manufacturer, and Jessie (Hart) White;
she was forty-one and Samuel was forty-five. Elwyn grew up in comfort. He was the youngest
child of a large family, where parents really loved children. On
Elwyn's twelfth birthday his father wrote to him: "Think today on your
mercies. You have been born in the greatest and best land on the face
of the globe under the best government known to men. Be thankful then
that you are an American. Moreover you are the youngest child of a
large family and have profited by the companionship of older brothers
and sisters - this is no small matter for you are wiser by reason of
their experiences." (Some Writer!: The Story of E. B. White by Melissa Sweet, 2016, p. 7) White once said, that he was a busy writer long before he went into
long pants. At eigteen, he decided against joining the Great War. After graduating from Cornell University in 1921, White
worked in some miscellaneous jobs, such as reporter for United Press,
American Legion News Service, and the Seattle Times,
from which he was dismissed. The dismissal was no reflection on his
ability, but his style and devotion to writing simply did not suit the
paper. "I was a literary man in the highest sense of the term, a poet
who met every train," he said in his essay 'The Years of Wonder' (1961). (Essays of E.B. White by E.B. White, 2006, p. 211) In 1923 White returned to New York. For a period he worked as
a production assistant and advertising copywriter before joining the
newly established New Yorker.
There he met his wife,
Katherine Sergeant Angell, who was the
magazine's literary editor. They married in 1929. "She had made her way
in Harold Ross's otherwise all-boy staff and could be brusque," wrote
John Updike, "though there was no mistaking her warm heart and
high hopes for the magazine." (Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism by John Updike, 2013, p. 465)
Ross described White as one of his staff "geniuses" – the others were
Wolcott Gibbs and James Thurber. Katherine was not included in this
group, but she shaped the magazine's style, especially its literary
preferences. (Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E. B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of The New Yorker by Thomas Vinciguerra, 2016, p. 11) White's 'Child's Play,' which appeared
in the last issue of 1925, marked the emergence of a new and original
voice in the world of media. Charles Chaplin regarded it as one of the
best
humor things he had read. In the story a waitress in a crowded
restaurant spills a glass of buttermilk on the suit of the author, who
refuses to be embarrassed. "I was just sitting there, all buttermilk,
patting my stomach in a desultory fashion with paper napkin – which, I
leave it to my readers, is about all you can expect of a man. I was
even fairly content with the world." For 11
years White wrote
for the magazine editorial essays and contributed verse and other
pieces. Among the other journalists with whom White and his wife become
close
friends were Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, James Thurber, and Stephen Leacock. Walden is the only book I own, although there are some others unclaimed on my shelves. Every man, I think, reads one book in his life, and this one is mine. It is not the best book I ever encountered, perhaps, but it is for me the handiest, and I keep it about me in much the same way one carries a handkerchief – for relief in moments of defluxion or despair. (White in The New Yorker, May 23, 1953) In 1927 White joined the staff of the New Yorker's,
and remained there for the rest of his career. He avoided public speaking. Though he wanted to
be read, he did not seek the approval of the "literary" world and was
not interested in the leading members of the avant-garde of his
generation. A few doors down the street on which he lived in the
Greenwich Village, was the office of the Dial,
edited by Marianne Moore, who published the poems of T.S. Eliot,
William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and others. However,
though modernist aestheticism was not the source of inspiration for
White's work, he probably read E.E. Cummings's humorous pieces from Vanity Fair. White's favorite subjects were the complexities of modern society, failures of technological progress, the pleasures of urban and rural life, war, and internationalism. He was skeptical about organized religion, and advocated a respect for nature and simple living. White's early collections of poetry, The Lady Is Cold (1929) and The Fox of Peapack and Other Poems (1928), reflected his interest in "the small things of the day" and "the trivial matters of the heart." From 1938 to 1943 he wrote and edited a column called 'One Man's Meat' for Harper's magazine. These collected essays, featuring White's rural experiences, were published in 1942. Critics hailed this as White's best book to date, but he first gained wide fame with the publication of Is Sex Necessary?, which he wrote with his friend and colleague James Thurber. With his wife he published A Subtreasury of American Humour (1941). One Man's Meat, which came out in 1942, and was reissued two years later in expanded form, had a nonstop run of 55 years in print. It was compiled of White's columns for Harper's with three essays from the New Yorker. A significant turn in White's life was when he moved in 1939 to a farm in North Brooklin, Maine. White
continued his writing without the responsibilities of a regular
job. Katherine gave up her high position in the New Yorker
and followed him into the new surroundings. However, White never
stopped loving New York, calling it "a riddle in steel
and stone," but he also prophetically saw the vulnerability of the
city: "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 millions. .
. . All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of
annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated
because 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." (Here is New York by E. B. White, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949, p. 51) The
barn near White's Maine home inspired many of the characters in his
stories for children. Karherine began writing garden pieces for the New Yorker in 1958. Her book Onward and Upward in the Garden,
edited and with an intruduction by her husband, was published
posthumously in 1979. ". . . she was by temperament an editor, not a
writer," White said in the introduction. "Katherine's act of
composition often achieved the turbulence of a shoot-out. The editor in
her fought the writer every inch of the way; the struggle was felt all
through the house." ('Introduction' by E. B. White, in Onward and Upward in the Garden, 2002, p. viii) After World War II White became an enthusiastic editorial supporter of internationalism and the United Nations,
publishing an collection of essays under the title The Wild Flag
(1946). In the essay 'The Ring of Time' (1956) he dealt with
segregation. He tells how he explained to his cook, who was from
Finland, that in the American Southland she should sit in one of the
front seats – the seats in back are reserved for colored people. "Oh, I
know – isn't it silly," was her reply and White concludes: "The Supreme
Court said nothing about silliness, but I suspect it may play more of a
role than one might suppose. People are, if anything, more touchy about
being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust. . . .
Probably the first slave ship, with Negroes lying in chains on its
decks, seemed commonsensical to the owners who operated it and to the
planters who patronized it. But such a vessel would not be in the realm
of common sense today. The only sense that is common, in the long run,
is the sense of change – and we all instinctively avoid it, and object
to the passage of time, and would rather have none of it." ('The Ring of Time' by E. B. White, in The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century Essays, edited by Ian Hamilton, 1999, p. 292) In 1959 White published a standard style manual for writing, The Elements of Style, which became a mainstay of high-school and college English courses in the U.S. The work was based on Prof. William Strunk Jr.'s privately printed book, Little Book, which had gone out of print. White, who had been Strunk's student at Cornell, revised the original adding a chapter and expanding some of the other content. Later Strunk & White's The Elements of Style was revised several times. The famous manual, with its timeless observations, is still considered an exemplar of the principles it explains. "A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary part." White's essay ´'Will Strunk', published in the New Yorker, now serves as the intro to the book. Between writing columns, White also published children's books. Stuart Little (1945) depicted an independent and adventurous child, the size of mouse, who is born into a human family. After various adventures Stuart goes in search of a bird whose life he had previously saved. Charlotte's Web (1952) was about the friendship between a young pig, Wilbur, and a spider, Charlotte A. Cavitica. She craftily saves him from the butcher's knife through the message, ''Some Pig,'' she weaves in her web – only to die alone. About twenty years later, this beloved book was musicalized and animated for the screen by Charles A. Nichols and Iwao Takamoto. Earl Hammer, Jr. adapted the story faithfully, Robert B. Sherman supplied the songs, and Josoph Barbera and William Hanna were producers. In The Trumpet of the Swan (1970) a mute swan learns to trumpet and becomes a celebrity. White explored in his children's books such themes as loyalty, tolerance, and rural living. These books have become for many young readers unforgettable guides into the world of fiction. E. B. White died of Alzheimer disease on October 1, 1985 in North
Brooklin, Maine. He was awarded the gold medal for essays and criticism
of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Pulitzer Prize
special citation in 1978. He held honorary degrees from seven American
colleges and universities and was a member of the American Academy.
Martha White, the author's granddaughter, has collected White's
observations on freedom and democracy in On Democracy (2019). For further reading: Who Was E. B. White? by Gail Herman; illustrated by Dede Putra (2022); Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E. B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of The New Yorker by Thomas Vinciguerra (2016); E. B. White: The Essayist as First-class Writer by G. Douglas Atkins (2012); Meet E. B. White by S. Ward (2001); E. B. White: The Emergence of an Essayist by Robert L. Root, Jr. (1999); E. B. White: The Children's Books by Lucien L. Agosta (1995); E. B. White The Elements of a Writer by Janice Tingum (1995); Critical Essays on E. B. White, ed. by Robert L. Root (1994); Stuart Little: A Full-Length Musical Based Upon the Book by E. B. White by Ronna Frank (1993); E. B. White: Some Writer! by Beverly Gherman (1992); To the Point: A Story About E. B. White by David R. Collins, Amy Johnson (1989); E. B. White: A Biography by Scott Elledge (1984); E. B. White by Edward C. Sampson (1974) Selected works:
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