Be prepared to be met with juvenile remarks when carrying around a copy of One Man's Meat, the book of EB White essays. It is exactly this sort of facile wisecrackery that White himself abominated. Still, White's elegant essays are tonics in these vulgar times.It's interesting as well that White's occasional testiness can be scene as either the last vestiges of old-school Yankee hardheadedness or as a brand of proto-snark, as in this passage on topics of modern (1939) childrens' books [bearing in mind this was years before he himself famously wrote such things]:
Indians, animals, faeries, these old reliables still occupy the key
positions. Indians seem, if anything, to be gaining - gaining in
stature
and in numbers. The child of twenty-five years ago had his
Fenimore Copper
Indian, his cigar-store Indian, his lead-soldier Indian with
a feather
headdress; but he thought of the Indian as an agreeably
bloodthirsty but bygone
creature of history, definitely suspect. Today,
thanks to progressive
education and some appreciative artists and writers in
the Southwest, the Indian
stands reborn - in a fine clean region
of his own, halfway between
DiMaggio and Christ.
Some of his descriptions rank with the best of Cheever and Updike, as in this from a piece on a visit to Walden Pond:
A fire engine, out for a trial spin, roared past Emerson's house, hot with
readiness for public duty.
On raising a seagull from a hatchling:
The gull was a present from Mr. Dameron, who wore an odd look of guilt on his
face as he approached, that evening, proffering the chick in a pint-size ice
cream container as tentatively as though it were a bill for labor.
These mild-ass topics fairly pop, sentence by sentence. Plus the way in which White describes his gentleman farmer labors leaves one with a feeling of envy at his comfort with both himself and his surroundings. Says me.
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"There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, 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 New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities the greatest is the last--the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. "
- from Here Is New York (1948)
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